THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT 

From  the  Library  of 

Henry  Goldman,   Ph.D. 

1886-1972 


A  STUDY  OF  ETHICAL  PRINCIPLES 


A    STUDY 


OF 


ETHICAL    PRINCIPLES 


BY 


JAMES     SETH,    M.A. 

PROFESSOR   OF   MORAL   PHILOSOPHY   IN   THK 
UNIVERSITY   OF   EDINBURGH 


FOURTH   EDITION,   REVISED 


NEW    YORK 
CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS 

153-157    FIFTH    AVENUE 
1898 


Xti  Rights  reserved 


TO 


MY    MOTHER 


PREFACE   TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 


IN  this  volume,  which  is  the  outcome  of  several  years 
of  continuous  reflection  and  teaching  in  the  department 
of  ethics,  an  effort  has  been  made  to  re-think  the  entire 
subject,  and  to  throw  some  light  upon  the  real  course  of 
ethical  thought  in  ancient  and  in  modern  times.  The 
author  has  been  anxious,  in  particular,  to  recover,  and, 
in  some  measure,  to  re-state  the  contribution  of  the 
Greeks,  and  especially  of  Aristotle,  to  moral  science. 

The  use  of  two  terms  calls  for  a  word  of  explanation. 
I  have  distinguished  '  Eudsemonism '  from  '  Hedonism,' 
and  adopted  the  former  term  to  characterise  my  own 
position.  Though  these  two  terms  are  often  identified, 
some  writers  have  been  careful  to  discriminate  between 
them ;  and  it  seemed  to  me  most  important,  for  reasons 
which  will  appear,  to  follow  their  example,  and  to  use 
'  Eudsemonism '  in  its  original  or  Aristotelian  sense. 
The  second  point  is  the  distinction  drawn  between  '  the 
individual '  and  '  the  person.'  This  distinction  comes, 
of  course,  from  Hegel ;  but,  in  giving  it  a  leading  place 


viii  Preface  to  the  Third  Edition 

in  the  discussion,  I  am  following  the  example  of  Pro- 
fessor Laurie  of  Edinburgh  in  his  Ethica,  or  the  Ethics 
of  Reason,  a  book  to  which  I  probably  owe  more  than 
to  the  work  of  any  other  living  writer  on  ethics. 

My  other  obligations  I  have  tried  to  acknowledge  in 
the  course  of  the  book,  but  it  is  difficult  to  make  such 
acknowledgments  complete.  I  have  to  thank  my  former 
colleague,  Professor  Walter  G.  Everett,  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity, for  many  helpful  suggestions  made  while  the 
work  was  in  manuscript,  and  my  brother,  Professor 
Andrew  Seth,  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  for  his 
aid  and  advice  while  the  original  edition  was  passing 
through  the  press. 

In  the  present  edition  several  important  changes  have 
been  made.  The  new  chapter  on  "  The  Method  of 
Ethics "  explains  the  more  limited  view  of  the  science 
which  further  reflection  has  forced  upon  the  writer. 
The  retention  of  the  Third  Part,  "  Metaphysical  Impli- 
cations of  Morality,"  is  due  to  the  writer's  continued 
belief  in  the  intimate  relation  of  ethics  to  metaphysics. 
The  discussion  of  the  place  of  pleasure,  psychological 
and  ethical,  has  been  carried  further  than  in  the  first 
and  second  editions.  Use  has  been  made  of  an  article 
published  in  The  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  July 
1896.  A  new  chapter,  on  "Moral  Progress,"  has  been 
added  to  the  Second  Part.  For  the  assistance  of 
students,  a  sketch  of  the  literature  of  the  subject  has 
been  appended  to  each  chapter,  and  an  index  has  been 
added.  It  is  hoped  that  these  and  other  minor  changes 


Preface  to  the  Third  Edition  ix 

may  make  the  volume  more  acceptable  to  those  teachers 
who  have  done  it  the  honour  of  adopting  it  as  a  text- 
book. 

In  the  preparation  of  this  edition,  and  especially  of 
the  new  chapter  on  "  Moral  Progress,"  the  author  desires 
to  acknowledge  his  special  obligations  to  Dr  David  Irons, 
of  the  department  of  philosophy  in  this  university. 


J.  S. 


CORNELL  UNIVERSITY, 
ITHACA,  NEW  YORK,  December  1897. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER    I. 

THE   ETHICAL  PROBLEM. 

PAGE 

1.  Preliminary  definition  of  ethics.     What  is  morality  ?     What  is 

conduct  ?     Conduct  and  character         ....  3 

2.  In  what  sense  is  ethics  practical  ?     Relations  of  moral  theory 

and  practice         .......  5 

3.  Relations  of  moral  faith  and  ethical  insight.     Impossibility  of 

absolute  moral  scepticism  .....  9 

4.  Business  of  ethics  to  define  the  good  or  the  moral  ideal,  by 

scrutiny  of  the  various  interpretations  of  it  .  .  .         11 

5.  Ancient  and  modern  conceptions  of  the  moral  ideal  compared. 

(a)  Duty  and  the  chief  good ;  their  logical  connection.     Per- 
sonality as  moral  ideal    ......         14 

6.  (b)  Ancient  ideal  political,  modern  individualistic  ;  the  inade- 

quacy of  each,  and  their  reconciliation  in  personality  ,         16 

7.  Various  aspects  of  the  ethical  problem :  (a)  the  good ;  (b)  the 

right ;  (c)  moral  law ;  (d)  conscience ;  (c)  virtue ;  (/)  duty  ; 

(g)  pleasure  ;  (A.)  altruism  ;  (i)  self-sacrifice       .  .  .18 

CHAPTER    II. 

THE   METHOD   OF   ETHICS. 

1.  Natural  and  normative  sciences.     Ethics  a  science  of  the  latter 

type         ........         24 

2.  Its  method  scientific,  not  metaphysical      .  .  .  .31 

3.  Two  misunderstandings  of  the  term  '  normative  science '  .         35 


xii  Contents 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   BASIS. 

1.  Necessity  of  psychological  basis  ;  an  inadequate  view  of  human 

life  rests  upon  an  inadequate  view  of  human  nature     .  .         38 

2.  Voluntary  activity  presupposes  involuntary  ;    various  forms  of 

the  latter  .......         40 

3.  Voluntary  activity,  how  distinguished  from  involuntary  ;  volition 

as  control  of  impulsive  and  instinctive  tendencies  ;  contrast  of 
animal  and  human  life    .  .  .  .  .  .42 

4.  The  process  of  volition  :    its  various  elements,   (a)  pause  ;    (V)     ' 

deliberation  ;  (c)  choice  ......         45 

5.  Nature  and  character.     Effort.     Second  nature   .  .  .49 

6.  Limitations  of  volition  :  (a)  economy ;  (b)  continuity  ;  (c)  fixity 

of  character         .......         53 

7.  Intellectual  elements  in  volition  :  (a)  conception  ;  (6)  memory  ; 

(c)  imagination     .......         59 

8.  Will  and  feeling.     Is  pleasure  the  object  of  choice  ?  .63 


PAET    I. 
THE    MORAL    IDEAL. 

TYPES  OF  ETHICAL  THEORY  :  HEDONISM,  RATIONALISM,  EUD^MONISJI      79 

CHAPTER    I. 

HEDONISM,   OR  THE  ETHICS   OF   SENSIBILITY. 

I. — Development  of  the  TJieory. 

1.  (A)  Pure  Hedonism,  or  Cyrenaicism          .  .  .  .83 

2.  (B)  Modified  Hedonism  :  (a)  Ancient,  or  Epicureanism    .  .         88 

3.  (b)   Modern  Hedonism,  or  Utilitarianism.     Its  chief  variations 

from  Ancient:  (1)  optimistic  v.  pessimistic;  (2)  altruistic  v. 
egoistic ;  (3)  qualitative  v.  quantitative  .  .  .94 

4.  (c)  Evolutional  Utilitarianism         .  .  .  .  .101 

5.  (d)  Rational  Utilitarianism  ...  .       108 

II. — Critical  Estimate  of  Hedonism. 

6.  (a)  Its  psychological  inadequacy    .  .  .  .  .112 

7.  (6)  Failure  of  sensibility  to  provide  the  principle  of  its  own  dis- 

tribution.    (1)  Within  the  individual  life.  (2)  Between  the 

individual  and  society    .             .             .  .  .             .122 

8.  (c)  The  hedonistic  account  of  duty    .         .  .  .             .136 

9.  (d)  Its  resolution  of  virtue  into  prudence .  .  .            .139 


Contents  xiii 

10.  (e)  Its  inadequate  interpretation  of  character     .  .       141 

11.  (/)  The  final  metaphysical  alternative     .  .  .       144 

12.  The  merit  and  demerit  of  Hedonism        .  .  .       146 

CHAPTER    II. 

RATIONALISM,   OR   THE  ETHICS   OF  REASON. 

1.  The  rationalistic  point  of  view.      The  two  forms  of  ethical 

Rationalism — extreme  and  moderate.     Its  sources  .  .       151 

2.  (A)  Extreme  Rationalism,      (a)  Ancient :   (a)  Cynicism.      (/3) 

Stoicism.  How  it  differs  from  Cynicism :  (1)  idealistic  v. 
naturalistic ;  (2)  cosmopolitan  v.  individualistic ;  (3)  the  Stoic 
melancholy  .  .  .  .  .  ,;  .  154 

3.  (6)  Modern :  (a)  Christian  asceticism        .  ..  ,  .          .       161 

4.  (/3)  Kantian  transcendentalism     .  .  .  .  .163 

5.  Criticism  of  extreme  Rationalism.     (1)  Dualism  of  reason  and 

sensibility;  (2)  formalism  ;  (3)  egoism;  (4)  self-sacrifice;  (5) 
source  in  metaphysical  dualism.  Transition  to  moderate 
Rationalism  .  .  .  .  .  .  .164 

6.  (£)  Moderate  Rationalism,     (a)  Its  beginnings  in  Greek  ethics .       170 

7.  (6)  Its  modern  expressions,     (a)  Butler's  theory  of  conscience    .       171 

8.  Criticism  of  Butler's  theory.     (1)  Its  hedonistic  tendency  ;  (2) 

its  psychological  character  ;  (3)  its  dualism  (i)  of  virtue  and 
prudence,  (ii)  of  benevolence  and  self-love  .  .  .176 

9.  (jB)  Intuitionism.     Its  divergences  from  Butler.     Its  defects : 

(1)  its  abstractness ;  (2)  what  is  intuitive  to  the  individual 
may  be  the  result  of  the  race's  experience ;  (3)  its  formal 
defects :  it  is  (i)  a  mere  psychology  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness, (ii)  a  mere  re-statement  in  scientific  terms  of  the  or- 
dinary moral  consciousness  ;  (4)  its  ethical  insight  .  .  179 

10.  The  service  of  Rationalism  to  ethical  theory        .  .  .184 

11.  Transition  to  Eudaemonism  .  .  .  .  .      185 

CHAPTER    III. 

EUD^EMONISM,   OR  THE   ETHICS  OP  PERSONALITY. 

1.  The  ethical  dualism.     Its  theoretical  expression .  .  .       188 

2.  Its  practical  expression     .  .  .  .  .  .       191 

3.  Attempts  at  reconciliation  .  .  .  .  .192 

4.  The  solution  of  Christianity         .  ...  .       194 

5.  The  ethical  problem  :  the  meaning  of  self-realisation     .  .197 

6.  Definition  of  personality  :  the  individual  and  the  person  .      199 

7.  The  rational  or  personal  self :  its  intellectual  and  ethical  func- 

tions compared  ......       201 

8.  The  sentient  or  individual  self      .....       203 

9.  "  Be  a  person  ".......       205 


XIV 


Contents 


10.  "  Die  to  live."     Meaning  of  self-sacrifice  .  .  .206 

11.  Pleasure  and  happiness     ......       209 

12.  Egoism  and  altruism         .  .  .  .  .  .210 

13.  The  ethical  significance  of  law  :  the  meaning  of  duty.     Animal 

innocence  and  "knowledge  of  good  and  evil."    Various  forms 

of  law.    Its  absoluteness          .  .  .  .  .212 

14.  Expressions  of  Eudscmonism :  (a)  in  philosophy,     (a)  Butler. 

(0)  Hegel.     (7)  Plato.     (5)  Aristotle  .  .218 

15.  (6)  In  literature 227 


PART    II. 
THE    MORAL    LIFE. 

INTRODUCTORY.    VIRTUES  AND  DUTIES.    THE  UNITY  OF  THE  MORAL 

LIFE      ........      239 

CHAPTER    I. 

THE  INDIVIDUAL   LIFE. 

I. — Temperance,  or  Self -discipline. 

1.  Its  fundamental  importance         .....  241 

2.  Its  negative  aspect  ......  243 

3.  Relation  of  negative  to  positive  aspect     ....  245 

4.  Its  positive  aspect  ......  246 

II. — Culture,  or  Self -development. 

5.  Its  fundamental  importance         .....       247 

6.  Meaning  of  culture  .  .  .  .  .  .248 

7.  The  place  of  physical  culture        .....       249 

8.  The  individual  nature  of  self-development  .  .  .       251 

9.  Necessity  of  transcending  our  individuality.     The  ideal  life       .       254 

10.  Dangers  of  moral  idealism  .....  256 

11.  Ethical  supremacy  of  the  moral  ideal       ....  260 

12.  Culture  and  philanthropy  .....  262 

13.  Self -reverence.     The  dignity  and  solitude  of  personality  .  265 

CHAPTER    II. 

THE    SOCIAL    LIFE. 

I. — The  Social  Virtues  :  Justice  and  Benevolence. 

1.  The  relation  of  the  social  to  the  individual  life   .  .  .       269 

2.  Social  virtue — its  nature  and  its  limit     ....       272 

3.  Its  two  aspects,  negative  and  positive :  justice  and  benevolence. 

Their  mutual  relations  and  respective  spheres  .  .       273 


Contents 


xv 


4.  Benevolence           .......  276 

5.  Benevolence  and  culture  .             .             .             .             .             .  279 

II. — The  social  organisation  of  life :  the  ethical  basis  and 
functions  of  the  State. 

6.  The  social  organisation  of  life  :  society  and  the  State     .             .  281 

7.  Is  the  State  an  end-in-itself  ?        .  .  .  .  .287 

8.  The  ethical  basis  of  the  State       .  289 

9.  The  limit  of  State  action  .  .  .  .  .  .294 

10.  The  ethical  functions  of  the  State  :  (a)  justice   .             .             .  296 

11.  (b)  Benevolence      .......  304 

12.  The  permanence  of  the  State        .....  310 
Note.  The  Theory  of  Punishment             .                                      .312 

CHAPTER    III. 

MORAL    PROGRESS. 

1.  The  nature  of  moral  progress       .....  317 

2.  The  law  of  moral  progress :  the  discovery  of  the  individual       .  323 

3.  Aspects  of  the  law  of  moral  progress :  (a)  Transition  from  an 

external  to  an  internal  view     .....  332 

4.  (b)  Subordination  of  the  sterner  to  the  gentler  virtues  .             .  337 

5.  (c)  Wider  scope  of  virtue  ......  342 

Conclusion                                                    ....  347 


PART    III. 
METAPHYSICAL    IMPLICATIONS    OF    MORALITY. 

INTRODUCTORY.      1.   ETHICS   AND   METAPHYSICS.     2.   THK   THREE 

PROBLEMS  OF  THE  METAPHYSIC  OP  ETHICS     .  .  .      353 

CHAPTER    I. 

THE   PROBLEM   OF  FREEDOM. 

1.  Statement  of  the  problem  .  .  .  .       360 

2.  The  "  moral  method "       .  .  .  .  .  .364 

3.  The  "  reconciling  project ".....       367 

4.  Definition  of  moral  freedom :  its  limitations       .  .  .       370 

5.  The  resulting  metaphysical  problem.     The  problem  of  freedom 

is  the  problem  of  personality.     The  alternative  solutions — 

the  empirical  and  the  transcendental .  .  .  .372 

6.  The  transcendental  solution         .....       375 

7.  Difficulties  of  the  transcendental   solution  :    (a)  psychological 

difficulty  offered  by  the  presentational  theory  of  will  .       378 


xvi  Contents 

8.  (b)  Metaphysical  difficulty  of  Transcendentalism  itself.     (1)  In 

Kantianism,  an  empty  and  unreal  freedom     .             .             .  386 

9.  (2)  In  Hegelianism,  a  new  determinism  ....  389 
10.  Resulting  conception  of  freedom  ...                         .  395 

CHAPTER    II. 

THE    PROBLEM    OF    GOD. 

1.  The  necessity  of  the  theological  question             .             .             .  398 

2.  Agnosticism  and  Positivism                       ....  401 

3.  Naturalism            .                          .....  405 

4.  Man  and  nature    .......  409 

5.  The  modern  statement  of  the  problem     .  .  .  .414 

6.  Its  ancient  statement        ......  416 

7.  The  Christian  solution      ......  421 

8.  The  ideal  and  the  real       ......  422 

9.  The  personality  of  God     ......  427 

10.  Objections  to  anthropomorphism :  (a)  from  the  standpoint  of 

natural  evolution           ......  430 

11.  (b)  From  the  standpoint  of  dialectical  evolution              .            .  434 

12.  Intellectualism  and  moralism  :  reason  and  will  .             .            .  443 

CHAPTEE    III. 

THE  PROBLEM   OF  IMMORTALITY. 

1.  The  alternatives  of  thought          .....  449 

2.  Immortality  as  the  implication  of  morality         .             .            .  450 

3.  Personal  immortality        ......  455 


INDBX        .....  463 


INTRODUCTION 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE    ETHICAL    PROBLEM. 

1.  Ethics  is  the  science  of  morality  or  conduct.  A  pre- 
liminary notion  of  what  is  meant  by  these  terms  will 
serve  to  bring  out  the  nature  of  the  inquiry  on  which 
we  are  entering. 

Morality  is  described  by  Locke  as  "  the  proper  science 
and  business  of  mankind  in  general."  In  the  same  spirit 
Aristotle  says  that  the  task  of  ethics  is  the  investigation 
of  the  peculiar  and  characteristic  function  of  man — 
the  activity  (Ivipyeia),  with  its  corresponding  excellence 
(aperrj),  of  man  as  man.  And  "  can  we  suppose,"  he  asks, 
"  that,  while  a  carpenter  and  a  cobbler  each  has  a  func- 
tion and  a  business  of  his  own,  man  has  no  business 
and  no  function  assigned  him  by  nature  ?  " l  Morality 
might  in  this  sense  be  called  the  universal  and  character- 
istic element  in  human  activity,  its  human  element  par 
excellence,  as  distinguished  from  its  particular,  technical, 
and  accidental  elements.  Not  that  the  moral  is  a  smaller 
and  sacred  sphere  within  the  wider  spheres  of  secular 
interests  and  activities.  It  is  rather  the  all-inclusive 
sphere  of  human  life,  the  universal  form  which  embraces 
the  most  varied  contents.  It  is  that  in  presence  of  which 
all  differences  of  age  and  country,  rank  and  occupation,  dis- 
appear, and  the  man  himself  stands  forth  in  all  the  unique 
and  intense  significance  of  his  human  nature.  Morality 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  i.  p.  7  (11). 


4  Introduction 

is  the  great  leveller ;  life,  no  less  than  death,  makes  all 
men  equal.  "We  may  be  so  lost  in  the  minute  details 
and  distracting  shows  of  daily  life  that  we  cannot  see 
the  grand  uniformity  in  outline  of  our  human  nature  and 
our  human  task ;  here,  as  elsewhere,  we  are  apt  to  lose 
the  wood  in  the  trees.  But  at  times  this  uniformity  is 
brought  home  to  us  with  startling  clearness,  and  we  dis- 
cover, beneath  the  utmost  diversity  of  worldly  circum- 
stance and  outward  calling,  our  common  nature  and  our 
common  duty.  The  delineation  of  this,  the  proper  busi- 
ness of  mankind  in  general,  is  the  endeavour  of  ethical 
science. 

Conduct,  according  to  Matthew  Arnold,  is  three- 
fourths  of  life,  the  other  fourth  being  the  province  of 
the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  as  distinguished  from  the 
moral  life.  But  when  truly  conceived,  as  expressive 
of  character,  conduct  is  the  whole  of  life.  As  there 
is  no  action  which  may  not  be  regarded  as,  directly 
or  indirectly,  an  exponent  of  character,  so  there  is  no 
most  secret  thought  or  impulse  of  the  mind  but  mani- 
fests itself  in  the  life  of  conduct.  Nor  can  the  intel- 
lectual and  emotional  life  be  separated  from  the  volitional 
or  moral.  If,  indeed,  with  Spencer,  we  extend  the 
term  *  conduct '  so  as  to  cover  merely  mechanical  as  well 
as  reflex  organic  movements,  then  we  must  limit  the 
sphere  of  ethics  to  "  conduct  as  the  expression  of  char- 
acter." But,  in  the  sense  indicated,  the  conduct  of  life 
may  be  taken  as  synonymous  with  morality.  Such  con- 
duct embraces  the  life  of  intellect  and  emotion,  as  well 
as  that  which  is,  in  a  narrower  sense,  called  practice 
— the  life  of  overt  activity.  Man's  life  is  one,  in  its 
most  diverse  phases ;  one  full  moral  tide  runs  through 
them  all. 

But  let  us  analyse  conduct  a  little  more  closely.  Spen- 
cer defines  it  as  the  adjustment  of  acts  to  ends,  and  we 
may  say  it  is  equivalent  to  purposive  activity,  or  more 
strictly,  in  conformity  with  what  has  just  been  said,  con- 


The  Ethical  Problem  5 

sciously  purposive  activity.  It  is  the  element  of  purpose, 
the  choice  of  ends  and  of  the  means  towards  their  accom- 
plishment, that  constitutes  conduct;  and  it  is  this  inner 
side  of  conduct  that  we  are  to  study.  Now,  choice  is  an 
act  of  will.  Since,  however,  each  choice  is  not  an  iso- 
lated act  of  will,  but  the  several  choices  constitute  a  con- 
tinuous and  connected  series,  and  all  together  form,  and 
in  turn  result  from,  a  certain  settled  habit  or  trend  of 
will,  a  certain  type  of  character,  we  may  say  that  conduct 
is  the  expression  of  character  in  activity.  Activity 
which  is  not  thus  expressive  is  not  conduct ;  and  since 
a  will  that  wills  nothing  is  a  chimera,  and  a  will  which 
has  not  acquired  some  tendency  in  its  choice  of  activities 
is  no  less  chimerical,  we  may  add  that  there  is  no  char- 
acter without  conduct. 

Conduct,  therefore,  points  to  character,  or  settled  habit 
of  will.  But  will  is  here  no  mere  faculty,  it  is  a  man's 
'  proper  self.'  The  will  is  the  self  in  action  :  and  in  order 
to  act,  the  self  must  also  feel  and  know.  Only  thus  can 
it  act  as  a  self.  The  question  of  ethics,  accordingly,  may 
be  stated  in  either  of  two  forms  :  (1)  What  is  man's  chief 
end  ?  or  (2)  What  is  the  true,  normal,  or  typical  form  of 
human  selfhood  ?  (1)  Man  has  a  choice  of  ends :  what 
is  that  end  which  is  so  worthy  of  his  choice  that  all  else 
is  to  be  chosen  merely  as  the  means  towards  its  fulfil- 
ment ?  What,  among  the  possible  objects  of  human 
choice,  is,  in  the  last  analysis  and  for  its  own  sake,  worth 
choosing  ?  And  (2)  since,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  object 
of  his  choice  is  a  certain  type  of  selfhood,  this  question 
resolves  itself  into  the  other :  Which,  among  the  possible 
selves,  is  the  true  or  ideal  self  ?  Into  what  universal 
human  form  shall  he  mould  all  the  particular  activities 
of  his  life  ? 

2.  The  ethical  question  both  practical  and  theo- 
retical.— To  man  his  own  nature,  like  his  world,  is  at 
first  a  chaos,  to  be  reduced  to  cosmos.  As  he  must 


6  Introduction 

subdue  to  the  order  and  system  of  a  world  of  objects  the 
varied  mass  of  sensible  presentations  that  crowd  in  upon 
him  at  every  moment  of  his  waking  life,  so  must  he 
subdue  to  the  order  and  system  of  a  rational  life  the  mass 
of  clamant  and  conflicting  forces  that  seek  to  master  him 
— those  impulses,  passions,  appetites,  affections  that  seem 
each  to  claim  him  for  itself.  The  latter  question  is,  like 
the  former,  first  a  practical  and  then  a  theoretical  ques- 
tion ;  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  "  knowledge  is 
power."  The  first  business  of  thought  about  the  world 
—  the  business  of  ordinary  thought  —  is  to  make  the 
world  orderly  enough  to  be  a  world  in  which  we  can 
live.  Its  second  business  is  to  understand  the  world  for 
the  sake  of  understanding  it,  and  the  outcome  of  this  is 
the  deeper  scientific  and  philosophic  unity  of  things.  So 
the  first  business  of  thought  about  the  life  of  man  is  to 
establish  a  certain  unity  and  system  in  actual  human 
practice.  Its  second  business  is  to  understand  that  life 
for  the  sake  of  understanding  it,  and  the  outcome  of  this 
is  the  deeper  ethical  theory  of  life. 

Ethics  is  accordingly  often  called  practical,  as  opposed 
to  theoretical,  philosophy  or  metaphysics.  The  descrip- 
tion is  correct,  if  it  is  meant  that  ethics  is  the  philosophy 
or  theory  of  practice ;  and  is  indeed  only  another  way  of 
saying  what  we  have  just  said.  It  suggests,  however, 
the  question  of  the  relations  of  moral  theory  and  practice. 
Life  or  practice  always  precedes  its  theory  or  explanation; 
we  are  men  before  we  are  moralists.  The  moral  life, 
though  it  implies  an  intellectual  element  from  the  first, 
is,  in  its  beginnings,  and  for  long,  a  matter  of  instinct,  of 
tradition,  of  authority.  Moral  progress,  whether  in  the 
individual  or  in  the  race,  may  be  largely  accounted  for 
as  a  blind  struggle  of  moral  ideals,  hardly  realised  to  be 
ideals,  in  which  the  fittest  survive.  Human  experience 
is  a  continuous  and  keen  scrutiny  of  these  ideals  ;  history 
is  a  grand  contest  of  moral  forces,  in  which  the  strongest 
are  the  victors.  The  conceptions  of  good  and  evil,  virtue 


The  Ethical  Problem  7 

and  vice,  duty  and  desert,  which  guide  the  life,  not  merely 
of  the  child  but  of  the  mass  of  mankind,  are  largely 
accepted,  like  intellectual  notions,  in  blind  and  unques- 
tioning faith.  But  moral,  like  intellectual,  manhood 
implies  emancipation  from  such  a  merely  instinctive  life ; 
moral  maturity  brings  with  it  reflection  upon  the  mean- 
ing of  life.  The  good  man,  like  the  wise  man,  puts  away 
childish  things  ;  as  a  rational  being,  he  must  seek  to 
reduce  his  life,  like  his  world,  to  system.  The  words 
of  the  oracle  inevitably  make  themselves  heard,  jvwdi 
atavTov.  Man  must  know  himself,  come  to  terms  with 
himself.  The  contradictions  and  rivalries  of  ethical  codes, 
the  varying  canons  of  moral  criticism,  the  apparent  chaos 
of  moral  practice,  force  upon  him  the  need  of  a  moral 
theory.  This  demand  for  a  rationale  of  morality,  for 
principles  which  shall  give  his  life  coherence,  marks  the 
transition  from  the  practical  to  the  theoretical  stand- 
point, from  life  itself  to  its  theoretic  understanding. 

Just  when  this  transition  is  made,  just  when  morality 
passes  from  the  instinctive  to  the  reflective  stage,  whether 
in  the  life  of  the  race  or  of  the  individual,  it  is  impossible 
to  say.  For,  after  all,  practice  implies  theory.  While  a 
clear  and  adequate  theory  can  be  expected  only  after  long 
crude  practice,  yet  every  life  implies  a  certain  plan,  some 
conception,  however  vague  and  ill-defined,  of  what  life 
means.1  No  life  is  altogether  haphazard  or  from  hand 
to  mouth.  Only  the  animal  lives  from  moment  to 
moment ;  even  the  child-man  and  the  vicious  man  "  look 
before  and  after,"  if  they  do  not,  like  the  good  man, 
"  see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole."  Every  action  im- 
plies a  purpose,  that  is,  a  thought  of  something  to  be 
done,  and  therefore  worth  doing.  The  individual  action 
does  not  stand  alone,  it  connects  itself  with  others,  and 
these  again  with  others,  in  the  past  and  in  the  future ; 
nor  can  we  stop  at  any  point  in  the  progress  or  in  the 

1  Cf .  Professor  Dewey's  excellent  article  on  "  Moral  Theory  and  Practice," 
in  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  i.  p.  186. 


8  Introduction 

regress.  In  every  action  there  is  implied  a  view,  narrower 
or  larger,  of  life  as  a  whole,  some  conception  of  its  total 
scope  and  meaning  for  the  man.  The  individual  act  is 
never  a  res  completa,  a  separate  and  independent  whole  : 
to  complete  it  you  must  always  view  it  in  the  totality  of 
its  relations,  in  the  entire  context  of  the  life  of  which  it 
is  a  part.  A  man  does  not,  in  general,  make  up  his 
mind  afresh  about  each  particular  action,  or  consider  it  on 
its  own  merits ;  he  refers  it  to  its  place  in  the  general 
scheme  or  plan  of  life  which  he  has  adopted  at  some 
time  in  the  past.  But  such  a  scheme  or  plan  of  life 
is  already  an  implicit  theory  of  life.  It  is  impossible, 
therefore,  to  make  an  absolute  distinction  between  the 
loose  moral  reflection  of  ordinary  life,  and  that  deeper 
and  more  systematic  reflection  which  is  entitled  to  the 
name  of  moral  science.  An  intermediate  stage  of  '  pro- 
verbial morality '  would,  in  any  case,  have  to  be  dis- 
tingushed — the  Book  of  Wisdom  of  the  race.  If  every 
one  is  a  metaphysician,  every  one  is,  still  more  inevitably, 
a  moralist.  Ethical  science  is  only  a  deeper,  more  strenu- 
ous, and  more  systematic  reflection  upon  life,  a  thinking 
of  it  out  to  greater  clearness  and  coherence,  a  more  per- 
sistent effort  to  "  see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole." 
The  reflection  of  the  ordinary  man,  even  in  the  pro- 
verbial form,  is  unsystematic  and  discontinuous ;  the 
system  of  man's  life,  the  principles  on  which  it  may 
be  reduced  to  system,  remain  for  the  more  patient  and 
theoretical  inquiry  of  moral  science. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  it  is  impossible  to  separate  prac- 
tice from  theory,  so  it  is  impossible  to  separate  theory 
from  practice.  As  Aristotle  insisted,  the  abiding  interest 
of  the  moralist  is  practical,  as  well  as  theoretical.  Wis- 
dom has  its  natural  outflow  in  goodness,  as  proverbial 
morality  has  always  declared ;  the  head  guides  the  hand, 
the  intellect  the  will.  This  inseparable  connection  of 
theory  and  practice  was  profoundly  understood  by  the 
Greek  philosophers,  with  whom  Socrates'  maxim  that 


The  Ethical  Problem  9 

"  virtue  is  knowledge "  was  always  a  guiding  idea,  as 
well  as  by  the  Hebrews,  for  whom  wisdom  and  good- 
ness, folly  and  sin,  were  synonymous  terms.  It  is  also 
familiar  to  us  from  the  teachings  of  Christianity,  whose 
Founder  claims  to  be  at  once  the  Truth  and  the  Life, 
and  preaches  that  '  life  eternal '  is  '  to  know '  the  Father 
and  the  Son.1  A  larger  and  deeper  conception  of  the 
meaning  of  life  inevitably  brings  with  it  a  larger  and 
deeper  life.  Intellectual  superficiality  is  a  main  source 
of  moral  evil ;  folly  and  vice  are  largely  synonymous. 
Accordingly,  the  first  step  towards  moral  reformation  is 
to  rouse  reflection  in  a  man  or  people ;  to  give  them  a 
new  insight  into  the  significance  of  moral  alternative. 
The  claims  of  morality  will  not  be  satisfied  until  the 
rigour  of  these  claims  is  understood.  All  moral  awaken- 
ing is  primarily  an  intellectual  awakening,  a  repentance 
or  change  of  mind  (neravoia).  Moral  insight  is  the 
necessary  condition  of  moral  life,  and  the  philosophy 
which  deepens  such  insight  is  at  once  theoretical  and 
practical,  in  its  interest  and  in  its  value.  By  fixing 
our  attention  upon  the  ideal,  ethics  tends  to  raise  the 
level  of  the  actual.  The  very  intellectual  effort  is 
itself  morally  elevating;  such  a  turn  of  the  attention  is 
full  of  meaning  for  character.  A  moral  truth  does  not 
remain  a  merely  intellectual  apprehension ;  it  rouses  the 
emotions,  and  demands  expression,  through  them,  in 
action  or  in  life. 

3.  Moral  faith  and  ethical  insight. — Ethics  is  the 
effort  to  convert  into  rational  insight  that  faith  in  a 
moral  ideal  or  absolute  human  good  which  is  at  the  root 
of  all  moral  life.  That  such  a  moral  faith  is  always 
present  in  morality,  and  is  the  source  of  all  moral  in- 
spiration, hardly  needs  to  be  proved.  Moral,  like  in- 
tellectual, scepticism  can  only  be  relative  and  partial. 

1  St  John's   central   conception  of   '  Light '   similarly    emphasises  the 
unity  of  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  life. 


1 0  Introduction 

If  absolute  intellectual  scepticism  means  speechlessness, 
or  cessation  from  thought,  absolute  moral  scepticism 
means  death,  or  cessation  from  activity.  Life,  like 
thought,  is  the  constant  refutation  of  scepticism.  As  the 
continued  effort  to  think  is  the  refutation  of  intellectual 
scepticism,  the  continued  effort  to  live  is  the  refutation  of 
moral  scepticism.  We  live  by  faith.  The  effort  to  live, 
the  perseverare  in  esse  suo,  implies,  in  a  rational  or  reflec- 
tive being,  the  conviction  that  life  is  worth  living,  that 
there  are  objects  in  life,  that  there  is  some  supreme 
object  or  sovereign  good  for  man.  Such  a  faith  may  be 
a  blind  illusion,  as  pessimism  declares ;  but  it  is  none 
the  less  actual  and  inevitable.  The  ordinary  man,  it  is 
true,  does  not  realise  that  he  has  this  faith,  except  in  so 
far  as  he  reflects  upon  his  life.  His  plan  of  life  is  largely 
implicit ;  he  estimates  the  goods  of  life  by  reference  to  a 
silently  guiding  idea  of  the  good.  To  press  the  Socratic 
question,  Good  for  what  ?  and  thus  to  substitute  for  a 
blind  unthinking  faith  the  insight  of  reason,  is  to  pass 
from  ordinary  to  reflective  thought.  That  life  is  worth 
living,  is  the  postulate  of  life  itself ;  why  it  is  worth 
living,  is  the  question  of  ethics  as  a  science. 

Now  when  this  ethical  question  is  urged,  there  is  at 
once  revealed  a  seemingly  chaotic  variety  of  goods,  which 
refuse  to  be  reduced  to  any  common  denominator.  One 
man's  meat  is  another  man's  poison.  If  the  meta- 
physician is  tempted  to  ask  despairingly,  in  view  of 
the  conflict  of  intellectual  opinion,  What  is  truth  ?  the 
moralist  is  no  less  tempted,  in  face  of  a  similar  conflict 
of  moral  opinion,  to  ask,  What  is  good  ?  What  appears 
good  to  me  is  my  good,  what  appears  good  to  you  is 
yours ;  there  is  apparently  no  moral  criterion.  Here,  at 
any  rate,  we  seem  to  be  reduced  to  absolute  subjectivity. 
Each  man  appears  to  be  his  own  measure  of  good,  and 
no  common  measure  seems  possible.  Yet  the  scientific 
thinker  cannot,  any  more  than  the  ordinary  man,  escape 
from  faith  in  an  absolute  good.  Like  the  ordinary  man, 


The  Ethical  Problem  11 

he  may  have  his  difficulties  in  defining  it,  and  may  waver 
between  different  theories  of  its  form  and  content.  But 
any  and  every  theory  of  it  implies  the  faith  that  there  is 
such  a  thing.  This  moral  faith  is  the  matter  constantly 
given  to  the  moralist  that  he  may  endue  it  with  scientific 
form.  He  cannot  destroy  the  matter,  he  can  only  seek 
to  form  it;  his  task  is  the  progressive  conversion  of 
ordinary  moral  faith,  of  the  moral  common-sense  of  man- 
kind, into  rational  insight.  It  is  his  to  explain,  not  to 
explain  away,  this  moral  faith  or  common-sense.  That 
there  is  an  absolute  or  ideal  good  is  the  assumption  of 
every  ethical  theory — an  assumption  which  simply  means 
that,  here  as  everywhere,  the  universe  is  rational.  Ethics 
seeks  to  verify  this  assumption  or  to  reduce  it  to  know- 
ledge, by  exhibiting  its  rationality.  Variety  of  opinion 
as  to  what  the  good  is,  is  always  confined  within  the 
limits  of  a  perfect  unanimity  of  conviction  that  there  is 
an  absolute  good.  Even  the  utilitarian,  insisting  though 
he  does  on  the  relativity  of  all  moral  distinctions,  on  the 
merely  consequential  and  extrinsic  nature  of  goodness, 
yet  recognises  in  happiness  a  good  which  is  absolute. 
Similarly,  the  evolutionist,  with  his  wellbeing  or  welfare, 
sees  in  life,  no  less  than  the  perfectionist  or  the  theologian, 
"  one  grand  far-off  divine  event"  To  lose  sight  of  this, 
to  surrender  the  conviction  of  an  absolute  human  good, 
would  be  fatal  to  all  ethical  inquiry.  Its  spur  and 
impulse  would  be  gone.  But  ethics,  like  metaphysics,  is 
a  tree  which,  though  every  bough  it  has  ever  borne  may 
be  cut  away,  will  always  spring  up  afresh ;  for  its  roots 
are  deep  in  the  soil  of  human  life.  As  the  faith  in  a 
supreme  good  must  remain  as  long  as  life  lasts,  the 
scientific  effort  to  convert  that  faith  into  the  rational 
insight  of  ethical  theory  must  also  continue. 

4.  The  business  of  ethics,  then,  is  to  scrutinise  the 
various  ideals  which,  in  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of 
the  race,  are  found  competing  for  the  mastery.  Life 


1 2  Introduction 

itself  is  such  a  scrutiny ;  human  history  is  one  long 
process  of  testing,  and  the  fittest  or  the  best  ideals 
survive.  But  the  scrutiny  of  history  is  largely,  though 
by  no  means  entirely,  unconscious.  The  scrutiny  of 
science  is  conscious  and  explicit.  Ethics,  as  moral  re- 
flection, institutes  a  systematic  examination  of  human 
ideals,  and  seeks  to  correlate  them  with  the  true  or 
absolute  ideal  of  humanity.  The  accidental  and  the 
imperfect  in  them  must  be  gradually  eliminated,  until, 
as  the  reward  of  long  and  patient  search,  the  absolute 
good  at  last  shines  through.  As  logic  or  the  theory  of 
thought  seeks,  beneath  the  apparent  unreason  and  acci- 
dent of  everyday  thought  and  fact,  a  common  reason 
and  a  common  truth,  so  does  ethics  seek,  beneath  the 
apparent  contradictions  of  human  life,  a  supreme  and 
universal  good — the  norm  and  criterion  of  all  actual 
goodness. 

Or  we  may  say,  with  Aristotle,  that  ethics  is  the 
investigation  of  the  final  end  or  purpose  of  human  life. 
The  good  (TO  ayaOov)  is  the  end  (rtAoc,  TO  ov  tveica), — that 
end  to  which  all  other  so-called  '  ends '  are  really  means. 
Such  a  teleological  view  is  necessary  in  the  case  of 
human  life,  irrespective  of  the  further  question  whether 
we  can,  with  Aristotle,  extend  it  to  the  universe,  and 
include  the  human  in  the  divine  or  universal  end. 
Human  life,  at  any  rate,  is  unintelligible  apart  from  the 
idea  of  purpose ;  the  teleological  and  the  ethical  views 
are  one.  Since  moral  life  is  a  series  of  choices,  and 
character  or  virtue  is,  as  Aristotle  said,  a  certain  habit 
or  settled  tendency  of  choice,  the  ethical  question  may 
be  said  to  be,  "What  is  the  true  object  of  choice  ?  What 
object  approves  itself  to  reflective  thought  as  uncondition- 
ally worthy  of  our  choice  ?  What  ought  we  to  choose  ? 
Now  the  objects  of  choice  fall  into  two  great  classes, — 
ends  and  means,  objects  that  we  choose  for  their  own 
sake,  and  objects  that  we  choose  for  the  sake  of  other 
objects.  Some  objects  we  judge  to  possess  an  absolute, 


The  Ethical  Problem  13 

primary,  and  intrinsic  value  ;  other  objects  we  judge  to 
possess  only  a  relative,  secondary,  and  extrinsic  value. 
But,  strictly,  there  can  be  only  one  end,  one  object  or 
type  of  objects  to  which  we  attribute  absolute  and  in- 
dependent value,  one  .good  that  constitutes  the  several 
goods.  Ethical  system  and  unity  imply  such  an  ultimate 
and  unitary  good;  and  ethical  thinkers,  when  they  have 
understood  their  task,  have  always  sought  for  this  last 
term  of  moral  value,  this  one  end  to  which  all  other 
so-called  '  ends  '  are  merely  means,  and  which  they  have 
therefore  called  by  the  proud  name  of  the  Good  (TO 


It  is  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  moral  life 
is,  like  the  psychical  life  generally,  rather  an  organic 
growth  than  a  mechanism  or  fixed  arrangement.  Like 
the  organism,  it  preserves  its  essential  identity  through 
all  the  variations  of  its  historical  development  ;  it  evolves 
continuously  in  virtue  of  an  inner  principle.  To  discover 
this  constant  principle  of  the  evolution  of  morality  is  the 
business  of  ethics.  The  task  of  the  ethical  thinker  is 
not  to  construct  a  system  of  rules  for  the  conduct  of  life 
—  we  do  not  live  by  rule  —  but  to  lay  bare  the  nerve  of 
the  moral  life,  the  very  essence  of  which  is  spontaneity 
and  growth  away  from  any  fixed  form  or  type.  Each 
age  has  its  own  moral  type,  which  the  historian  of 
morality  studies  ;  and  the  hero  of  an  earlier  age  is  not 
the  hero  of  a  later.  Neither  Aristotle's  peyaXfyvxog 
nor  the  mediaeval  saint  will  serve  as  our  moral  type. 
The  search  of  ethics  is  for  the  organising  principle  of 
morality,  for  a  principle  which  shall  explain  and  co- 
ordinate all  the  changing  forms  of  its  historical  develop- 
ment. 

Nor  are  we  to  commit  what  we  may  call  the  'moralist's 
fallacy'  of  confusing  the  scientific  or  reflective  moral 
consciousness  with  the  ordinary  or  naive.  The  principles 
of  the  moral  life,  we  must  remember,  are  not  to  any 
great  extent  explicit  ;  its  ideals  are  not  clearly  realised 


14  Introduction 

in  the  consciousness  of  the  plain  man.  To  a  certain 
extent,  of  course,  the  ethical  life  is  a  thinking  life — up  to 
a  certain  point  it  must  understand  itself ;  it  is  not  to  be 
pictured  as  parallel  with  the  physical  life,  which  proceeds 
in  entire  ignorance  of  its  own  principles.  But  its  thought 
need  not  go  far,  and  the  business  of  ethics  is  not  to 
substitute  its  explicit  theory,  its  rational  insight  and 
comprehension,  for  the  implicit  and  na'ive  moral  intelli- 
gence of  ordinary  life.  Nor  is  the  proof  of  an  ethical 
theory  to  be  sought  in  the  discovery,  in  the  ordinary 
moral  consciousness  of  any  age  or  community,  of  such  a 
theory  of  its  life.  That  life  is  conducted  rather  by  tact, 
by  a  practical  insight  of  which  it  cannot  give  the  grounds. 
This  was  the  feeling  even  of  a  Socrates,  who  attributed 
such  unaccountable  promptings  to  the  unerring  voice  of 
the  divinity  that  guided  his  destiny.  The  moral  life 
precipitates  itself  in  these  unformulated  principles  of 
action ;  we  acquire  a  faculty  of  quick  and  sure  moral 
judgment,  as  we  acquire  a  similar  faculty  of  scientific  or 
artistic  judgment.  This  ability  comes  with  "  the  years 
that  bring  the  philosophic  mind,"  it  is  the  ripe  fruit  of 
the  good  life. 

5.  Ancient  and  modern  conceptions  of  the  moral 
ideal  compared :  (a)  Duty  and  the  chief  good. — 
Modern  moralists,  it  is  true,  prefer  to  raise  the  question 
in  another  form,  and  to  ask,  not  "  What  is  man's  chief 
end  ?  "  but  "  What  is  man's  duty  ;  what  is  the  supreme 
law  of  his  life  ?  "  The  right  is  the  favourite  category  of 
modern  ethics,  as  the  good  is  that  of  ancient.  But  this 
is,  truly  understood,  only  another  form  of  the  same 
question.  For  the  good  or  chief  end  of  man  does  not 
fulfil  itself,  as  the  divine  purpose  in  nature  does ;  man  is 
not,  or  at  least  cannot  regard  himself  as,  a  mere  instru- 
ment or  vehicle  of  the  realisation  of  the  purpose  in  his 
life.  His  good  presents  itself  to  him  as  an  ideal,  which 
he  may  or  may  not  realise  in  practice :  this  is  what  dis- 


TJie  Ethical  Problem  15 

tinguishes  the  moral  from  the  natural  life.  The  law  of 
man's  life  is  not,  like  nature's,  inevitable — it  may  be 
broken  as  well  as  kept :  this  is  why  we  call  it  a  moral 
law.  While  a  physical  law  or  a  law  of  nature  is  simply 
a  statement  of  what  always  happens,  a  moral  law  is  that 
which  ought  to  be,  but  perhaps  never  strictly  is.  So 
that,  while  the  ethical  category  has  changed  from  the 
summum  bonum  of  the  ancients  to  the  duty  and  law  of 
the  moderns,  the  underlying  conception  is  the  same,  and 
the  logic  of  the  transition  from  the  one  category  to  the 
other  is  easily  understood.  Perhaps  the  conception  of  a 
moral  ideal  may  be  taken  as  combining  the  classical  idea 
of  chief  good  or  end  with  the  modern  idea  of  law,  pre- 
senting the  antithesis  of  duty  and  attainment,  of  the 
Ought-to-be  and  the  Is. 

For  both  the  ancient  and  the  modern  conceptions  of 
the  moral  ideal  have  a  tendency  to  imperfection;  the 
former  is  apt  to  be  an  external,  the  latter  a  mechanical, 
view.  The  ancients  were  inclined  to  regard  the  end  as 
something  to  be  acquired  or  got,  rather  than  as  an  ideal  to 
be  attained, — as  something  to  be  possessed,  rather  than  as 
something  to  become.  The  ancient  view  tends  to  empha- 
sise the  material  side,  or  the  content,  of  morality,  where 
the  modern  view  emphasises  its  ideal  and  formal  side. 
Accordingly  it  is  the  attractiveness,  rather  than  the  im- 
perativeness, of  morality  that  chiefly  impresses  the  Greek 
mind.  But,  as  Aristotle  and  Kant  have  both  insisted, 
man  must  be  his  own  end ;  he  cannot  subordinate  him- 
self as  a  means  to  any  further  end.  The  moral  ideal  is 
an  ideal  of  character.  In  ancient  philosophy  we  can 
trace  a  gradual  progress  towards  this  more  adequate 
view.  As  the  conception  of  happiness  is  deepened,  it  is 
seen  to  consist  in  an  inner  rather  than  an  outer  well- 
being,  in  a  life  of  activity  rather  than  in  a  state  of 
dependence  on  external  goods,  in  a  settled  condition  or 
habit  of  will  rather  than  in  any  outward  circumstances 
or  fortune.  The  true  fortune  of  the  soul,  it  is  felt,  is  in 


1 G  Introduction 

its  own  hands,  both  to  attain  and  to  keep.  The  modern 
or  Christian  view  is  more  spiritual  and  idealistic.  "  Seek 
first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you  ;  "  "  take  no  thought 
for  the  morrow."  The  claims  of  righteousness  become 
paramount — do  the  right,  though  the  heavens  fall.  The 
danger  for  this  view  is  the  tendency  so  to  exaggerate  the 
notion  of  law  as  to  conceive  of  life  as  mere  obedience 
to  a  code  of  rules  or  precepts — to  think  of  morality  as 
something  to  do  (or  not  to  do)  rather  than  as  something 
to  be  or  to  become.  Such  a  view  of  morality  is  mechani- 
cal. Life  according  to  rule  is  as  inadequate  as  the 
pursuit  of  an  external  end;  and  it  is  only  gradually 
that  we  have  regained  the  classical  conception  of  ethical 
good,  and  have  learned  once  more  to  think  of  the  moral 
life  as  a  fulfilment  rather  than  a  negation  and  restraint, 
and  to  place  law  in  its  true  position  as  a  means  rather 
than  an  end. 

The  ancient  and  the  modern  views  of  the  moral  ideal 
are  thus  alike  inadequate  and  mutually  complementary ; 
they  must  be  harmonised  in  a  deeper  view.  The  end 
of  life  is  an  ideal  of  character,  to  be  realised  by  the 
individual,  and  his  attitude  to  it  is  one  of  obligation 
or  duty  to  realise  it.  It  is  not  something  to  be  got  or 
to  be  done,  but  to  be  or  to  become.  It  is  to  be  sought 
not  without,  but  within ;  it  is  the  man  himself,  in  that 
true  or  essential  nature,  in  the  realisation  of  which 
is  fulfilled  his  duty  to  others  and  to  God. 

6.  (&)  Ancient  ideal  political,  modern  individual- 
istic.— A  second  characteristic  difference  between  the 
standpoint  of  ancient  and  that  of  modern  moral  re- 
flection brings  out  still  more  clearly  the  necessity  of 
such  a  personal  view  of  morality.  The  moral  ideal 
of  the  classical  world  was  a  political  or  social  ideal, 
that  of  the  modern  world  is  individualistic.  To  the 
Greek,  whether  he  was  philosopher  or  not,  all  the  in- 


The  Ethical  Problem  17 

terests  of  life  were  summed  up  in  those  of  citizenship; 
he  had  no  sphere  of  '  private  morality.'  The  concep- 
tion of  the  State  was  so  impressive,  absorbing  even,  to 
the  Greek  mind,  that  it  seemed  adequate  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  entire  ethical  life ;  and  when  confidence 
in  its  adequacy  was  shaken  by  the  break-up  of  the  State 
itself,  and  recourse  was  had  of  sheer  necessity  to  the 
conception  of  a  life  of  the  individual  apart  from  the 
State, — when  the  notion  of  Greek  citizenship  was  aban- 
doned, as  in  Stoicism  and  Epicureanism,  for  that  of 
citizenship  of  the  world,  —  the  ethics  of  the  ancient 
world  had  already,  like  its  life  and  thought  in  general, 
entered  upon  its  period  of  decay. 

The  inadequacy  of  the  classical  standpoint  has  be- 
come a  commonplace  to  us;  we  detect  it  in  even  the 
best  products  of  the  moral  reflection  of  Greece,  in  the 
ethics  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  If  modern  theory  and 
practice  are  defective,  it  is  in  the  opposite  extreme. 
The  modern  ethical  standpoint  has  been  that  of  the 
individual  life.  This  change  of  standpoint  is  mainly  the 
result  of  the  acceptance  of  the  Christian  principle  of 
the  infinite  value  of  the  individual  as  a  moral  person, 
of  what  we  might  almost  call  the  Christian  discovery  of 
the  significance  of  personality.  The  isolation  of  the 
moral  individual  has  been  made  only  too  absolute;  the 
principle  of  mere  individualism  is  as  inadequate  as 
the  principle  of  mere  citizenship.  Hence  the  difficulty 
of  reconciling  the  claims  of  self  with  the  claims  of 
society — a  difficulty  which  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
existed  for  the  ancients,  who  had  not  yet  separated  the 
individual  from  his  society,  and  to  whom,  accordingly, 
the  two  interests  were  one  and  the  same.  Hence,  too, 
the  fantastic  and  impossible  conception  of  a  purely 
selfish  life,  which  has  caused  modern  moralists  such 
trouble.  Hence  the  ignoring  of  the  importance  of 
ethical  institutions,  especially  that  of  the  State,  resulting 
in  the  view  of  the  State  as  having  a  merely  negative  or 

B 


18  Introduction 

police  function,  and  the  Hobbes- Rousseau  theory  of 
society  itself  as  a  secondary  product,  the  result  of  con- 
tract between  individuals  who,  like  mutually  exclusive 
atoms,  are  naturally  antagonists. 

For,  in  reality,  these  two  spheres  of  life  are  insepar- 
able. The  interests  and  claims  of  the  social  and  of  the 
individual  life  overlap,  and  are  reciprocally  inclusive. 
These  are  not  two  lives,  but  two  sides  or  aspects  of  one 
undivided  life.  You  cannot  isolate  the  moral  individual ; 
to  do  so  would  be  to  de-moralise  him,  to  annihilate  his 
moral  nature.  His  very  life  as  a  moral  being  consists 
in  a  network  of  relations  which  link  his  individual  life 
with  the  wider  life  of  his  fellows.  It  is  literally  true 
that  no  man  liveth  to  himself — there  is  no  retiring  into 
the  privacy  and  solitude  of  a  merely  individual  life. 
Man  is  a  social  or  political  being.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  individual  is  more  than  a  member  of  society ;  he  is 
not  the  mere  organ  of  the  body  politic.  He  too  is  an 
organism,  and  has  a  life  and  ends  of  his  own.  The  good 
is,  for  every  individual,  a  social  or  common  good,  a  good 
in  which  he  cannot  claim  such  private  property  as  to 
exclude  his  fellows ;  their  good  is  his,  and  his  theirs. 
Yet  the  good — the  only  good  we  know  as  absolute — is 
always  a  personal,  not  an  impersonal,  good,  a  good  of 
moral  persons.  The  person,  not  society,  is  the  ultimate 
ethical  unit  and  reality. 

7.  Aspects  of  the  ethical  problem. — The  ethical 
problem  has  assumed  various  aspects,  according  to  the 
various  points  of  view  from  which  it  has  been  approached. 
It  may  be  well  to  indicate  here  the  chief  of  these  aspects, 
and  their  relation  to  one  another. 

(a)  The  first  is  also,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  the  most 
fundamental — viz. :  What  is  the  good  or  the  moral  ideal  ? 
or,  as  it  was  frequently  put  in  ancient  ethics,  "What  is  the 
summum  bonum,  or  the  chief  good  ?  What  is  the  good 
in  all  good  acts,  the  bad  or  evil  in  all  bad  or  evil  acts  ? 


The  Ethical  Problem  1 9 

(Z>)  The  second  aspect  of  the  problem  is  closely  con- 
nected with  the  first,  as  I  have  also  tried  to  show  above 
(§  5) — viz. :  What  is  the  right  ?  What  makes  all  right 
acts  right,  and  all  wrong  acts  wrong  ?  The  answer  must 
be  that  the  good  is  the  source  of  the  right,  that  the 
right  is  the  claim  of  the  good  upon  the  agent.  The 
Tightness  of  an  act  can  only  lie  in  its  worth  or  worthiness. 
The  Tightness  of  justice,  for  example,  lies  in  the  goodness 
of  justice,  in  its  essential  value.  The  ordinary  man  is 
content  with  the  conviction  of  the  Tightness  of  the  in- 
dividual act  or  set  of  actions, — with  the  knowledge  of 
what  is  right.  The  problem  of  ethics  is,  Why  is  the 
individual  act  or  set  of  actions  right  ?  And  the  why  of 
the  right  is  found  in  the  what  of  the  good. 

(c)  Modern  moralists  have,  however,  been  apt  to  rest 
in  the  notion  of    right,  and  it  has  been  part  of   their 
ethical  theory  that  the  right  is  irreducible  to  the  good. 
Accordingly,  the  right  has  been  regarded,  by  the  Intui- 
tional or  Common  Sense  School,  as  the  expression  of  final 
and  absolute  moral  law.     This  unconditional  imperative- 
ness of  morality  has  been  regarded  sometimes  as  having 
its  source  merely  in  the  fiat  of  the  divine  will,  but  more 
frequently  as  emanating  from  the  '  nature  of  things ' — 
the  divine  or  universal  reason.     The  ethical  problem  has 
therefore  taken  the  form  of  an  inventory  or,  better,  a 
codification  of   the   moral  laws.     The  differentiation  of 
moral  laws  from  the  positive  laws  of  any  political  society 
has  also  been  undertaken,  the  differentia  being  found  in 
the  universality  and  necessity  of  the  former,  as  contrasted 
with   the   particularity   and   contingency   of   the   latter. 
But  again  it  will  be  found  that  the  only  clue  to  the 
unique   nature   of  moral  law,  as  well  as  to  the  system 
which  the  several  moral  laws  together  constitute,  lies  in 
the  moral   ideal, — the    supreme   good   or   chief    end  of 
human  activity. 

(d)  What  may  be  called  the  legalistic  view  of  morality 
has  given  rise  to  a  question  which  is  much  more  pro- 


20  Introduction 

minent  in  modern  than  in  ancient  ethics — viz. :  What  is 
the  source  of  moral  knowledge  ?  How  are  the  laws  of 
moral  life  communicated  to  us  ?  How,  and  when,  do  we 
become  conscious  of  the  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong  ?  This  is  the  question  of  conscience,  sometimes 
called  the  '  moral  faculty '  or  the  '  moral  sense.'  One 
school  of  modern  ethics  derives  its  name  from  the  answer 
it  has  given  to  this  question — the  '  Intuitional '  school, 
which  holds  that  the  knowledge  of  moral  laws  is  intuitive 
or  a  priori,  in  opposition  to  the  view  that  such  knowledge 
is  a  posteriori,  or  the  result  of  moral  experience.  The 
contemporary  representatives  of  the  latter  view  are  the 
evolutionary  moralists,  who  insist  upon  tracing  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  most  complex  and  refined  moral  ideas  from 
their  earliest  and  simplest  elements.  The  same  question 
arises  in  a  new  form  if,  instead  of  speaking  of  '  conscience  ' 
as  a  special  faculty  or  sense,  we  speak  of  the  'moral 
consciousness/  or  of  man  as  conscious  of  a  moral  ideal. 
The  changing  forms  of  this  consciousness,  the  successive 
stages  of  man's  moral  experience,  the  reflection  of  his 
growing  appreciation  of  the  good  in  his  conception  of 
individual  activities  as  good, — the  rationale  of  all  this  is 
the  problem  of  ethics. 

(e)  One  of  the  main  problems  of  ancient  ethics  was  the 
inquiry  into  the  nature  of  virtue  and  of  the  several  virtues. 
To  the  Greeks  '  virtue '  meant  '  excellence  '  (O/OETJ?).  The 
question,  What  is  human  virtue  ?  was  therefore  for  them 
equivalent  to  the  question,  What  is  the  characteristic 
human  quality  or  excellence  ?  What  is  the  true  type  or 
ideal  of  human  activity,  which,  according  to  his  approxi- 
mation to  it,  is  the  measure  of  the  individual's  excellence  ? 
But  again  the  measure  of  excellent  activity  can  be  found 
only  in  some  supreme  end  of  activity — some  chief  good, 
in  obedience  to  which  the  several  excellences  are  reduced 
to  the  unity  of  some  all-containing  excellence.  A  sub- 
ordinate phase  of  the  problem  of  virtue  has  been  the 
differentiation  of  the  '  cardinal '  or  root-virtues  from  the 


The  Ethical  Problem  21 

secondary  or  derivative;  and  the  relative  importance 
attached  to  the  several  virtues  is  highly  significant  of 
the  level  of  moral  attainment.  The  Greek  apprecia- 
tion of  the  intellectual  life,  for  example,  is  reflected  in 
the  Aristotelian  subordination  of  'practical'  or  'moral' 
virtue  to  'intellectual*  or  theoretical,  while  the  tend- 
ency of  the  modern  Christian  mind  to  depreciate  the 
philosophic  and  scientific  as  well  as  the  artistic  life,  has 
led  to  the  omission  of  excellence  in  these  fields  from 
its  scheme  of  the  virtues.  The  clue  to  the  change  of 
emphasis  is  again  the  changed  conception  of  the  good, 
— the  changed  view  of  the  meaning  of  life  itself. 

(/)  In  modern  ethics  the  problem  has  more  generally 
assumed  the  form  of  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  and 
basis  of  duty  or  moral  obligation ;  and  the  attempt  has 
been  made  to  construct  a  scheme  of  duties  rather  than 
a  system  of  virtues.  While  virtue  is  a  form  or  quality 
of  character,  duty  is  a  form  or  quality  of  conduct ;  the 
one  refers  to  the  agent,  the  other  to  the  activity.  But 
we  have  seen  (§1)  that  conduct  and  character  are  in- 
separable, the  one  being  the  expression  of  the  other. 
Their  unifying  principle  must  therefore  be  the  same — 
some  central  and  all-containing  end  or  good,  the  uncon- 
ditional imperativeness  of  whose  claim  upon  the  agent 
constitutes  his  duty,  and  loyal  obedience  to  which  is  the 
essential  human  excellence  or  virtue.  The  idea  of  duty 
or  obligation  is  the  idea  of  imperativeness  or  ought-ness, 
of  the  '  Thou  shalt '  as  supplanting  in  the  moral  life  the 
'  Thou  must '  of  the  life  of  nature.  But  even  Kant, 
with  all  his  insistence  upon  the  '  categorical  imperative- 
ness' of  the  moral  life,  traces  the  absoluteness  of  its 
obligation  to  the  absoluteness  or  finality  of  the  end  of 
moral  activity,  to  the  unconditional  value  of  man  as  an 
end-in-himself. 

(g)  In  both  ancient  and  modern  ethics  the  problem 
has  always  been  apt  to  centre  in  the  question  of  the 
place  of  pleasure  in  the  moral  life.  This  question  has 


22  Introduction 

divided  moralists  of  both  periods  into  two  opposing 
schools,  the  one  of  which  has  accorded  to  pleasure  the 
supreme  place  and  recognised  in  it  the  only  final  Good, 
while  the  other  has  either  given  it  a  secondary  place  or 
found  in  it  no  ethical  value  at  all.  The  advocates  of 
pleasure  may  be  called  the  Hedonists  (nSov//,  pleasure) ; 
while  the  opposing  school  may  be  called  the  Rationalists, 
since  it  is  in  the  life  of  reason  that  they  find  the  absolute 
good  which  they  miss  in  the  life  of  pleasure. 

(A)  While  the  ethical  thought  of  the  ancient  world  is, 
in  spite  of  its  political  character,  prevailingly  egoistic  or 
individualistic,  modern  moralists  have  found  a  new  pro- 
blem (or  rather  a  new  aspect  of  the  old  problem)  in 
the  relation  of  the  individual  to  society,  of  the  individ- 
ual self  to  other  individuals.  The  question  has  arisen 
whether  the  individual  or  society  is  the  true  ethical 
unit,  whether  my  good  or  the  good  of  all  is  the  good. 
In  the  earlier  British  moralists  this  question  takes 
the  form  of  the  relation  of  '  self-love '  to  '  benevolence,' 
and  resolves  itself  into  the  problem  of  the  true  moral 
ratio  of  '  self  -  interest '  to  '  disinterestedness.'  In  the 
ethics  of  the  more  recent  hedonistic  school,  the  problem 
has  received  much  prominence ;  for  if  the  good  is  pleas- 
ure, the  further  question  arises,  Whose  pleasure  ?  The 
most  recent  answer  is  that  the  general  happiness  is 
alone  to  be  regarded  as  absolutely  good,  and  the  happi- 
ness of  the  individual  as  of  subordinate  and  relative  value. 
In  opposition  to  the  older  egoistic  Hedonism,  the  new 
Hedonism — that  of  J.  S.  Mill  and  his  successors — has 
signalised  its  altruistic  character  by  the  new  name  of 
'  Utilitarianism.' 

(i)  The  problem  of  altruism  is  also  the  problem  of 
self-sacrifice.  In  the  conflict  of  interests,  self-interest 
must  be  sacrificed  to  the  general  interest,  if  the  general 
happiness  is  to  be  attained.  But  even  within  the  circle 
of  egoistic  or  individualistic  thought  the  problem  of  the 
ethical  value  of  self  -  sacrifice  arises.  The  real  issue 


The  Ethical  Problem  23 

between  the  hedonistic  and  rationalistic  schools  is  the 
question,  Which  self  is  worth  realising  ?  Which  self 
ought  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  other — the  sentient  or 
the  rational  self  ?  And  a  further  question  arises  as 
to  the  reality  or  unreality,  and  the  absoluteness  or  the 
relativity,  of  the  self-sacrifice.  The  extreme  hedonistic 
school  (the  Cyrenaics)  advocated  the  real  and  absolute 
sacrifice  of  the  rational  or  reflective  to  the  sentient 
or  unreflective  self;  the  life  of  the  one  implied  the 
death  of  the  other.  The  extreme  rationalistic  view 
(that  of  Kant)  is  that  the  sentient  self  ought  to  be 
absolutely  sacrificed  to  the  rational,  that  the  one  must 
die  if  the  other  is  to  live.  A  more  moderate  form  of 
egoistic  Hedonism  (the  Epicurean),  holding  that  the 
virtuous  life  is  the  calculating  life  which  makes  the  most 
of  its  opportunities,  has  maintained  the  relativity  of  self- 
sacrifice  ;  the  less  pleasure  is  sacrificed,  it  is  said,  to  the 
greater.  A  more  moderate  Rationalism  has  also  refused 
to  see  anything  absolute  or  permanent  in  the  sacrifice  of 
the  sentient  to  the  rational  self.  The  problem  of  self- 
sacrifice  is  indissolubly  bound  up  with  that  of  self- 
realisation.  And  the  ultimate  problem  of  the  good  is 
at  the  same  time,  as  we  have  seen,  the  problem  of  the 
self. 

LITERATURE. 

Aristotle,  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  L-iv.,  vii.,  viii.,  xii. 

H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  i.  §§  1-3. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  ID  trod.,  ch.  i. 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  i.,  ii.  ;  bk.  it.  ch.  i.,  ii. 

John  Dewey,  A  Study  of  Ethics,  ch.  i.,  ii. 

S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  i.  ch.  ii. 


CHAPTEE  II. 

THE    METHOD    OF    ETHICS. 

1.  Ethics  a  normative  science. — Is  the  true  method 
of  ethics  the  method  of  science  or  that  of  philosophy  ? 
Our  answer  to  this  question  must  determine  our  general 
view  of  the  ethical  problem,  and  cannot  fail  to  affect  the 
solution  which  we  reach.  The  characteristic  tendency 
of  our  time  to  reduce  all  thought  to  the  scientific  form, 
and  to  draw  the  line  sharply  between  natural  or  positive 
science,  on  the  one  hand,  and  metaphysics  or  philosophi- 
cal speculation,  on  the  other,  has  made  itself  felt  in 
ethics,  which  is  now  defined  as  '  moral  science '  rather 
than  as  '  moral  philosophy,'  its  older  designation.  Nor 
is  this  usage  of  terms  a  complete  novelty  in  ethical 
literature.  Aristotle,  the  father  of  the  science,  clearly 
distinguished  ethics  as  the  science  of  the  good  (for  man) 
from  metaphysics  or  '  first  philosophy,'  whose  task  was 
the  investigation  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  things,  the 
absolute  good,  or  the  good  of  the  universe  itself.  In 
the  older  English  ethics  we  find  the  same  limitation  of 
the  inquiry,  and  a  frequent  adoption  of  the  psychological 
method.  It  is  to  Kant  and  his  successors,  in  Germany 
and  in  England,  that  the  encroachment  of  metaphysics 
upon  ethics  is  chiefly  due.  Kant  does  not  separate  the 
science  of  ethics  from  the  rnetaphysic  of  ethics,  which  is, 
for  him,  the  only  legitimate  metaphysic.  The  influence 
of  Kant  in  this  respect  is  evident  in  the  intuitional 


The  Method  of  Ethics  25 

ethics  of  the  later  Scottish  school,  hardly  less  than  in 
the  idealistic  ethics  of  the  Neo  -  Hegelians.  It  is  this 
general  acceptance  of  the  metaphysical  method  in  ethical 
inquiry  that  has  led  to  the  protest  on  the  part  of  the 
scientific  mind  of  our  time,  and  to  the  proclamation  by 
the  evolutionary  school  that  ethics  must  accept  the 
common  method  of  exact  knowledge,  and,  like  psychology 
(which  was  also  wont,  within  recent  memory,  to  claim 
near  kinship  with  metaphysics,  if  not  even  to  play  the 
rdle  of  the  latter),  become  a  '  natural  science.' 

Yet,  while  we  must  recognise,  in  the  view  that  the 
true  method  of  ethics  is  scientific  rather  than  philosophic, 
a  return  to  the  older  and  sounder  tradition  of  ethical 
thought,  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  determine  more 
precisely  the  place  of  ethics  among  the  sciences,  to 
distinguish  carefully  between  two  types  or  groups  of 
sciences,  both  alike  distinguishable  from,  metaphysics 
or  philosophy.  The  common  task  of  all  science  is  the 
rationalisation  of  our  judgments,  through  their  organisa- 
tion into  a  system  of  thought:  when  thus  systematised, 
our  judgments  are  scientifically  '  explained.'  But  these 
judgments  are  of  two  kinds :  judgments  of  fact  and 
judgments  of  worth,  or  judgments  of  what  is  and  judg- 
ments of  what  ought  to  be.  There  are,  accordingly,  two 
types  of  science :  first,  the  type  which  seeks  to  organise 
into  a  rational  system  the  chaotic  mass  of  our  Is- 
judgments ;  secondly,  the  type  which  seeks  to  organise  into 
a  rational  system  the  no  less  chaotic  mass  of  our  Ought- 
judgments.  The  former  type  of  science  we  may  call 
natural  or  descriptive;  the  latter,  normative  or  appreci- 
ative. The  purpose  of  the  natural  or  descriptive  sciences 
is  the  discovery,  by  reason,  of  the  actual  or  phenomenal 
order — the  order  that  characterises  '  matters  of  fact ' ; 
the  purpose  of  the  normative  or  appreciative  sciences 
is  the  discovery,  by  the  same  reason,  of  the  ideal  order 
which  always  transcends  and  rebukes  the  actual  order. 
The  natural  sciences  seek  to  penetrate  to  the  universal 


26  Introduction 

law  or  the  principle  of  order,  in  terms  of  which  we  can 
alone  consistently  and  completely  describe  the  facts  of 
the  universe  ;  the  normative  sciences  seek  the  universal 
standard,  in  terms  of  which  we  can  alone  consistently 
appreciate  the  facts  of  the  universe  —  their  common 
measure  of  value.  The  natural  sciences  have  to  do 
with  processes,  with  events,  with  modi  operandi ;  the 
normative  sciences  have  to  do  with  products  and  their 
quality.  The  function  of  the  one  set  of  sciences  is 
measurement,  that  of  the  other  is  evaluation.  The  one 
finds  rational  order  in  the  facts  of  the  world  and  human 
life  ;  the  other  judges  the  facts  of  the  world  and  life  by 
reference  to  a  rational  order  which  always  transcends  the 
facts  themselves.  The  result  of  the  common  effort  of 
the  one  group  is  what  Professor  Eoyce  has  called  the 
'  world  of  description  ' ;  that  of  the  other,  the  '  world  of 
appreciation.'  * 

To  the  former  class — that  of  the  natural  or  descriptive 
sciences — belong  all  the  sciences  of  nature  and  of  man 
as  a  natural  being.  Psychology  has  recently  taken  its 
place  in  this  group  of  sciences,  reasserting  the  Aristotelian 
view  of  its  vocation  and  method  as  a  '  natural  science ' 
dealing  with  the  process  of  human  experience.2  Ethics, 
on  the  other  hand,  is,  like  logic  and  aesthetics,  a  norma- 
tive or  appreciative  science — a  science  of  value.  These 
three  sciences  deal  with  our  critical  judgments,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  our  factual  judgments  ;  they  endeavour 
to  systematise  these  judgments  by  deducing  them  from  a 
common  standard  of  value,  a  final  criterion  of  apprecia- 
tion. As  it  is  the  business  of  logic  and  of  aesthetics 
respectively  to  interpret  and  explain  our  judgments  of 
intellectual  and  of  aesthetic  value,  so  it  is  the  business 

1  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Lect.  xii. 

2  Economics,  on  the  contrary,  shows  some  signs  of  resuming  its  affilia- 
tion to  the  normative  sciences,  through  its  dissatisfaction  with  the  extreme 
abstractness  of  the  conception  of  the  '  economic  man. ' 


The  Method  of  Ethics  27 

of  ethics  to  interpret  and  explain  our  judgments  of 
moral  value.  The  question  of  logic  is :  What  is  the 
true  ?  or,  What  is  the  ultimate  standard  of  intellectual 
judgment  ?  The  question  of  aesthetics  is :  What  is  the 
beautiful  ?  or,  What  is  the  ultimate  standard  in  judg- 
ments of  taste  ?  The  question  of  ethics  is  :  What  is  the 
good  ?  or,  What  is  the  ultimate  standard  of  practical 
judgment  or  judgment  about  conduct  ?  Our  several 
judgments,  so  far  as  they  are  consistent  with  one 
another,  about  the  value  of  thoughts,  of  feelings,  and 
of  actions,  are  reducible  to  a  common  denominator  of 
truth,  of  beauty,  and  of  goodness.  The  discovery  of 
this  common  denominator  of  intellectual,  of  esthetic, 
and  of  moral  judgment,  and  the  construction  of  the 
system  of  principles  which  these  judgments,  when  made 
coherent  and  self  -  consistent,  constitute,  is  the  task  of 
the  three  normative  sciences,  —  logic,  aesthetics,  and 
ethics. 

So  long  as  the  distinction  between  a  natural  and  a 
normative  science  is  clearly  realised,  there  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  not  recognise  both  a  natural  science 
and  a  normative  science  of  ethics.  Indeed,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  former  is  the  propaedeutic  to  the 
latter.  What  we  may  call  the  natural  history  of 
morality,  the  genetic  study  of  the  moral  life  (and  the 
moral  consciousness),  is  the  sine  qiid  non  of  an  intelligent 
interpretation  of  its  significance,  the  indispensable  pre- 
liminary to  its  reduction  to  ethical  system.  The  business 
of  such  a  preliminary  investigation  is  simply  to  discover 
the  causation  of  morality,  the  uniformities  of  sequence 
which  characterise  moral  antecedents  and  consequents 
as  they  characterise  all  other  phenomena.  But  such  an 
investigation  of  the  moral  facts,  though  it  is  well  entitled 
to  the  name  of  science,  is  only  the  handmaid  of  ethics 
as  a  normative  science,  as  the  effort  to  determine  the 
meaning  or  content  of  the  facts.  The  results  of  such 


28  Introduction 

a  natural  science  of  ethics  are  the  '  data  of  ethics '  as 
a  normative  science.1 

The  failure  to  distinguish  these  two  inquiries  has  led 
to  the  greatest  confusion  in  ethical  thought.  The  answer 
to  the  question  of  causal  '  origins '  has  been  offered 
(especially  in  English,  and  lately  in  German  ethics)  as 
the  answer  to  the  question  of  ethical  content  and  mean- 
ing. This  is  true  of  the  '  psychological '  theories  of  Hume 
and  Mill,  and  also  of  the  evolutionary  theory  which 
professes,  by  its  substitution  of  the  historical  and  gen- 
etic method  for  the  statical  view  of  the  earlier  moralists, 
to  have  raised  ethics  to  the  rank  of  a  science.  Take, 
for  example,  the  solution  offered  by  this  school  of  the 
problem  of  egoism  and  altruism.  The  problem  is :  Why 
ought  I  to  regard  the  interests  of  others  as  well  as  my 
own  ?  and  especially,  Why  should  I  sacrifice  my  own 
interests  to  those  of  others  ?  The  solution  offered  is  an 
account  of  the  causation  of  altruistic  conduct,  the  discov- 
ery of  the  psychological  fact  of  sympathy, — the  internal 
'  sanction,'  as  well  as  of  other  facts  of  minor  importance 
— the  external  '  sanctions,'  of  altruism,  and  of  the  factors 
in  the  evolution  of  these  sanctions.  But  these  sanctions 
are  merely  the  constant  antecedents — the  causes,  not  the 
reasons — of  altruistic  morality.  The  fact  of  self-sacrifice 
is  thus  explained,  by  being  related  to  other  facts  ;  the 
ethical  value  of  the  fact  is  not  explained.  The  might  of 
the  altruistic  impulse  is  exhibited,  and  accounted  for; 
its  right  is  not  vindicated.  The  question  of  ethics  as  a 

1  Cf.  Mr  Balfour's  statement  (A  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  Appen- 
dix, "  On  the  Idea  of  a  Philosophy  of  Ethics,"  p.  336) :  "  An  ethical  pro- 
position, though,  like  every  other  proposition,  it  states  a  relation,  does  not 
state  a  relation  of  space  or  time.  '  I  ought  to  speak  the  truth,'  for 
instance,  does  not  imply  that  I  have  spoken,  do  speak,  or  shall  speak  the 
truth  ;  it  asserts  no  bond  of  causation  between  subject  and  predicate,  nor 
any  coexistence,  nor  any  sequence.  It  does  not  announce  an  event ;  and 
if  some  people  would  say  that  it  stated  a  fact,  it  is  not  certainly  a  fact 
either  of  the  'external'  or  of  the  'internal'  world."  Later  (p.  348),  he 
gays  that  ethics  "  is  concerned  not  with  the  causes,  but  with  the  grounds 
or  reasons,  for  action." 


The  Method  of  Ethics  29 

normative  science  is  not :  How  has  a  certain  type  of 
conduct  or  character  come  to  be  approved  ?  but,  What  is 
the  basis  or  rationale  of  such  approval  ?  The  only 
answer  to  this  question  is  a  substantiation  of  the  claim 
of  the  conduct  or  character  in  question  as  the  claim  of 
some  ultimate  ideal  or  good.  Or,  take  the  closely  related 
problem  of  moral  obligation.  The  solution  offered  by  the 
'  psychological '  and  evolutionary  moralists  is  an  account  of 
how  man's  consciousness  of  obligation  has  varied  with  the 
varying  conditions  of  human  life,  how  the  police  force  of 
the  external  sanctions  has  gradually  given  place  to  the 
gentler  yet  more  persuasive  influence  of  a  growing  in- 
sight into  the  necessary  consequences  of  his  actions,  and 
how  even  this  coercion  is  destined  ultimately  to  dis- 
appear in  the  spontaneity  of  a  perfect  moral  life.  But 
again,  the  question  of  ethics  as  a  normative  science  is 
not:  What  is  the  actual  nature  and  genesis  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  obligation  ?  but,  What  is  the  content  of 
this  consciousness  ?  What  does  it,  fairly  interpreted, 
tell  us  about  man's  true  attitude  toward  himself,  his 
fellow-men,  and  God  ?  *  Take,  finally,  the  psychological 
and  evolutionary — the  genetic — account  of  the  moral 
ideal  itself.  The  plausibility  of  Hedonism  is  chiefly  due, 
in  my  opinion,  to  the  confusion  of  the  scientific  descrip- 
tion of  the  motivation  of  conduct  with  its  appreciation  in 
terms  of  an  ideal,  its  evaluation  in  terms  of  some  standard 
of  value.  The  function  of  pleasure  in  the  process  of 
conduct,  as  an  efficient  cause  in  all  human  activity,  is 
unquestionable,  and  it  was  useless  for  the  advocates  of 
the  life  '  according  to  right  reason '  to  attempt  the  dis- 
proof of  its  presence  and  decisive  operation  at  every 
point.  But  the  fact  that  every  choice  is  pleasant  does 
not  prove  that  it  is  a  choice  of  pleasure,  still  less  that 
pleasure  is  the  only  thing  worthy  of  choice.  The  moral 
ideal  must  appeal  to  feeling,  it  must  please  its  devotee ; 

1  Cf.  President  Schurman's  article  on  "The  Consciousness  of  Moral 
Obligation,"  Philosophical  Review,  vol.  iii.  pp.  650-652. 


30  Introduction 

and  the  various  forms  of  this  pleasure  have  been  well 
described  by  the  '  psychological '  and  evolutionary  moral- 
ists. But,  after  all  this  descriptive  explanation  of  the 
motivation  of  choice,  the  problem  of  the  content  of  the 
moral  ideal  itself  remains  unsolved  and  even  untouched.1 
It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  standard  of  ethical 
appreciation  has  itself  evolved.  With  the  gradual  evo- 
lution of  morality  there  is  being  gradually  evolved  a 
reflective  formulation  of  its  content  and  significance. 
The  evolving  moral  being  is  always  judging  the  moral 
evolution,  and  there  is  an  evolution  of  moral  judgment 
as  well  as  of  the  conduct  which  is  judged.  We  must 
distinguish,  however,  between  the  subjective  or  psycho- 
logical fact  of  moral  judgment,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
obje&tive  content  of  such  judgment,  on  the  other.  Just 
as  logic  distinguishes  between  the  psychological  fact  and 
the  logical  content  of  intellectual  judgment,  so  must 
ethics,  as  a  normative  science,  distinguish  between  the 
psychological  fact  and  the  objective  content  of  moral 
judgment.  The  history  of  the  causation  of  the  psycho- 
logical fact  is  one  question ;  the  content  of  its  testimony 
is  another  question.  Ethics  has  to  do  with  man's  ends 
(in  respect  of  their  content),  and  not  with  the  process  or 
mechanism  of  their  accomplishment.2  And  for  ethics 
as  a  normative  science,  the  objective  validity  of  moral 
judgment  (whether  crude  and  early,  or  ripe  and  late)  is 
a  necessary  assumption,  just  as,  for  logic,  the  objective 
validity  of  intellectual  judgment  is  a  necessary  assump- 
tion. The  reality  of  the  good,  and  our  ability  by 

1  Such  an  exposure  of  the  fallacy  of  ethical  '  Naturalism,'  '  Evolution- 
ism,' or  '  Empiricism,"  is,  of  course,  at  the  same  time  an  exposure  of  ethical 
'  Supernaturalism,'  '  Intuitionism,'  or  'A  priorism.'    The  question  of  ethics 
is  a  question  not  of  origin,  but  of  content ;  not  of  causation,  but  of  mean- 
ing.    The  truth  in  Intuitionism  is,  in  my  opinion,  simply  its  assertion  of 
ihe  ultimateness  for  ethics  of  the  ethical  point  of  view. 

2  Strangely  enough,  Professor  S.  Alexander  states  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  methods  of   ethics  and  psychology  in  just   these  terms,  and 
yet  adopts  the  latter  method  in  his  own  investigation.     Cf.  Moral  Order 
and  Progress,  pp.  62-70. 


The  Method  of  Ethics  31 

reflection  to  discover  it  (more  or  less  fully),  are  the 
postulates  of  ethics,  as  the  reality  of  truth,  and  our 
ability  by  reflection  to  discover  it,  are  the  postulates  of 
logic.  It  is  for  metaphysics  to  deal  with  both  assump- 
tions. 

Yet  we  must  never  forget  the  dependence  of  ethics 
as  a  normative  science  upon  the  natural  science  of 
ethics.  As  we  have  just  seen,  the  reflective  formula- 
tion of  morality  is,  like  morality  itself,  progressive.  It 
follows  that  the  complete  ethical  formula  at  any  stage 
must  include  all  preceding  formulae,  and  that  the  final 
ethical  formula  would  be  the  last  word  of  evolution 
itself.  The  true  ethical  interpretation  of  human  life 
must  be  plastic  as  Aristotle's  '  Lesbian  rule/ — the  living 
expression  of  the  changing  life  of  man ;  and  the  moral 
life  does  not,  any  more  than  the  physical  life,  commit 
itself  to  any  expression  as  final  and  exhaustive. 

2.  Ethical  method  scientific,  not  metaphysical. — 
The  normative  sciences,  however,  are  to  be  distinguished, 
no  less  than  the  natural  sciences,  from  metaphysics 
or  philosophy,  whose  problem  is  the  determination  of 
the  ultimate  or  absolute  validity  of  all  our  judgments, 
whether  they  are  judgments  of  fact  or  judgments  of 
worth.  Neither  the  natural  nor  the  normative  sciences 
deal  with  the  question  of  their  own  ultimate  valid- 
ity. It  is  the  function  of  metaphysics  to  act  as  critic 
of  the  sciences ;  the  sciences  do  not  criticise  them- 
selves. Each  assumes  the  validity  of  its  own  stand- 
point, and  of  its  own  system  of  judgments.  The 
normative  sciences  deal  with  our  judgments  of  worth, 
just  as  the  natural  sciences  deal  with  our  judgments 
of  fact ;  neither  the  one  group  of  sciences  nor  the 
other  investigates  the  final  validity  of  the  judgments 
which,  in  their  original  chaotic  condition,  are  the  datum, 
and,  in  their  systematic  order,  the  result  of  the  sciences 
in  question.  Whether  natural  or  normative,  science  is 


32  Introduction 

content  with  the  discovery  of  the  unifying  principle 
which  organises  the  several  judgments  of  ordinary  un- 
scientific thought  into  a  scientific  system.  The  determina- 
tion of  the  grounds  of  our  right  to  judge  at  all,  whether 
about  facts  or  values,  and  of  the  relative  validity  of  our 
judgments  of  fact  and  our  judgments  of  value,  science 
leaves  to  metaphysics,  which,  in  considering  the  epis- 
temological  question  of  the  possibility  of  an  ultimate 
vindication  of  human  knowledge  in  general,  is  compelled 
to  face  the  ontological  question  of  the  ultimate  nature  of 
reality  itself.  As  the  natural  sciences  leave  to  meta- 
physics the  problem  of  the  ultimate  validity  of  our 
judgments  of  fact,  and,  with  that  question,  the  deter- 
mination of  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality,  the  normative 
sciences  leave  to  metaphysics  the  inquiry  into  the  ulti- 
mate validity  of  our  judgments  of  value,  or  the  real  signifi- 
cance of  our  ideals.  As  the  natural  sciences  are  content 
with  the  discovery  of  the  actual  order,  or  the  order  of 
reality  as  it  exists  for  us,  the  normative  sciences  are  con- 
tent with  the  discovery  of  the  ideal  order  as  it  demands 
the  obedience  of  our  thought  and  feeling  and  activity. 
Both  the  normative  and  the  natural  sciences  alike  have 
to  be  criticised  and  correlated  by  metaphysics,  whose 
question  of  questions  is  that  of  the  comparative  validity 
of  the  Is-judgments  and  the  Ought-judgments  as  expres- 
sions of  ultimate  reality,  the  respective  merits  of  Realism 
and  Idealism,  of  Naturalism  and  Transcendentalism,  as 
interpretations  of  the  universe. 

To  take  the  case  of  ethics  in  particular,  we  must 
carefully  distinguish  the  science  from  the  metaphysic 
of  ethics.  The  science  of  ethics  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question  of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  for  example. 
As  the  science  of  morality,  ethics  has  a  right  to  as- 
sume that  man  is  a  moral  being,  since  his  judgments 
about  conduct  imply  the  idea  of  morality.  But 
whether  this  scientific  assumption  is  finally  valid  or 
invalid,  whether  the  moral  judgments  are  trustworthy 


The  Method  of  Ethics  33 

or  illusory,  and  whether  or  not  their  validity  implies  the 
freedom  of  man  as  a  moral  being, — are  problems  for 
metaphysics  to  solve.  Again,  ethics  does  not  base  its 
view  of  human  life,  its  system  of  moral  judgments,  upon 
any  metaphysical  interpretation  of  reality,  whether  ideal- 
istic or  naturalistic ;  although  here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
scientific  result  must  form  an  all-important  datum  for 
metaphysics.  Similarly  the  problem  of  God,  or  the 
ultimate  reality  of  the  moral  order,  and  the  nature  of 
this  ethical  reality — the  relation  of  man's  moral  ideal  to 
the  universe  of  which  he  is  a  part — is  a  question  not 
for  ethics,  but  for  metaphysics.  Ethics,  as  a  science, 
abstracts  human  life  from  the  rest  of  the  universe ;  it 
is  as  frankly  anthropocentric  as  the  natural  sciences  are 
cosmocentric.  Whether  or  not,  in  our  ultimate  inter- 
pretation of  reality,  we  must  shift  our  centre,  is  a  ques- 
tion which  metaphysics  must  answer.1 

The  fact  that  it  is  the  genius  and  function  of  the 
normative  sciences  to  transcend  the  actual,  and  to  judge 
its  value  in  terms  of  the  ideal,  doubtless  brings  these 
sciences  nearer  than  the  natural  sciences  to  metaphysics 
or  ultimate  philosophy.  For  while  the  natural  sciences 
are  content  with  the  discovery  of  the  phenomenal  order, 

1  Cf.  Mr  Balfour  (loc.  oil.,  pp.  337,  338) :  "  The  general  propositions 
which  really  lie  at  the  root  of  any  ethical  system  must  themselves  be 
ethical,  and  can  never  be  either  scientific  or  metaphysical.  In  other 
words,  if  a  proposition  announcing  obligation  require  proof  at  all,  one 
term  of  that  proof  must  always  be  a  proposition  announcing  obligation, 
which  itself  requires  no  proof.  .  .  .  There  is  no  artifice  by  which  an 
ethical  statement  can  be  evolved  from  a  scientific  or  metaphysical  pro- 
position, or  from  any  combination  of  such ;  and  whenever  the  reverse 
appears  to  be  the  fact,  it  will  always  be  found  that  the  assertion  which 
seems  to  be  the  basis  of  the  ethical  superstructure  is  in  reality  merely  the 
'  minor '  of  a  syllogism,  of  which  the  '  major '  is  the  desired  ethical  prin- 
ciple." It  should  be  noted  that  Mr  Balfour  uses  the  term  'science'  to 
designate  natural  science  exclusively.  What  I  have  called  a  '  normative 
science,'  he  would  apparently  include  in  philosophy.  T.  H.  Green,  and 
recently  Mr  C.  F.  D'Arcy  (A  Short  Study  of  Ethics),  have  insisted  upon 
a  metaphysical  derivation  of  ethics.  Cf.  Professor  Dewey's  discussion  of 
"  The  Metaphysical  Study  of  Ethics  "  (Psychological  Review,  vol.  iii.  pp 
181-188). 

C 


34:  Introduction 

the  order  of  the  facts  themselves,  even  a  naturalistic  or 
utilitarian  ethics,  for  example,  is  an  evaluation  of  human 
life  in  terms  of  a  standard  or  ideal,  viz.,  pleasure.  A 
judgment  of  worth  is  speculative — we  might  almost  say 
metaphysical — in  a  sense  in  which  a  judgment  of  fact  is 
not  speculative  or  metaphysical.  Its  point  of  view  is 
transcendental,  not  empirical.  It  follows  that  the  science 
which  organises  such  judgments  into  a  system  is  also 
transcendental,  and,  in  that  sense,  metaphysical.  Yet 
such  a  science  is  not  strictly  to  be  identified  with  meta- 
physics, for  three  reasons.  First,  it  agrees  with  common- 
sense  in  assuming  the  validity  of  the  judgments  of  value, 
whose  system  it  is  seeking  to  construct.  Secondly,  it 
abstracts  one  set  of  judgments  of  value — the  logical, 
or  the  aesthetic,  or  the  ethical — from  the  rest  of  the 
judgments  of  value.  Thirdly,  it  abstracts  the  judgments 
of  value  from  the  judgments  of  fact.  Now  it  is  the 
business  of  metaphysics  to  investigate  the  ultimate 
validity  of  the  judgments  of  value,  as  well  as  of  the 
judgments  of  fact ;  and,  in  order  to  determine  this,  it 
must  study  these  judgments  in  their  relations  both  to 
one  another  and  to  the  judgments  of  fact.  The  final 
term  of  metaphysical  judgment  may  be  normative,  rather 
than  naturalistic.  The  question  of  the  worth  of  exist- 
ence is  probably  more  important  than  the  question  of 
the  nature  of  existence :  meaning  is  probably  rather  a 
matter  of  value  than  a  matter  of  fact.  And  the  ulti- 
mate term  of  metaphysical  value  may  be  ethical,  rather 
than  logical  or  aesthetic.  Moral  worth  is  probably 
the  supreme  worth,  and  the  true  metaphysic  is  prob- 
ably a  metaphysic  of  ethics.  But  the  metaphysical 
ultimateness  of  that  term  —  whatever  it  be — will  not 
have  been  demonstrated  until  all  the  other  terms  have 
been  reduced  to  it,  explained,  and  not  explained  away, 
by  means  of  it.1 

1  For  a  further  and  more  positive  statement  of  the  relation  of  meta- 
physics to  ethics,  see  infra,  Part  III. 


The  Method  of  Ethics  35 

3.  Misunderstandings  of  '  normative  science.'  Two 
misunderstandings  must  be  guarded  against.  First,  the 
distinction  between  normative  and  natural,  or  appreciative 
and  descriptive,  sciences  is  not  intended  to  imply  that 
the  method  of  the  one  group  of  sciences  is  in  any  respect 
different  from  the  method  of  the  other.  The  method  of 
science  is  always  the  same,  namely,  the  systematisation 
of  our  ordinary  judgments  through  their  reduction  to  a 
common  unifying  principle,  or  through  their  purification 
from  inconsistency  with  one  another.  Whether  these 
judgments  are  judgments  of  fact  or  judgments  of  worth, 
makes  no  difference  in  the  method.  There  is  nothing 
mysterious,  or  superior,  or  'metaphysical'  in  the  procedure 
of  the  normative  sciences ;  it  is  the  plain,  unmeta- 
physical,  strictly  scientific  method,  only  applied  in  a 
different  field  —  to  a  different  subject-matter.  It  is 
merely  this  difference  in  the  subject-matter  that  I  have 
desired  to  assert  and  to  emphasise.  The  business  of 
ethics,  for  example,  is,  like  the  business  of  physics, 
simply  to  organise  the  judgments  of  common-sense  or 
ordinary  thought.  There  is  a  '  common-sense '  of  value, 
as  there  is  a  '  common-sense '  of  fact ;  and  there  is  a 
science  of  value,  as  there  is  a  science  of  fact.  The 
function  of  the  former  science,  as  of  the  latter,  is  simply 
to  make  common -sense  coherent  and  consistent  with 
itself.  The  true  method  of  ethics  is  the  Socratic  method^ 
j)f  a  thorough-going  and  exhaustive  cross-examination  of 
men's  actual  moral  judgments,  with  a  view  to  their 
systematisation.  And  though  the  mere  summation  of 
these  judgments  does  not  constitute  their  system,  the 
system  can  be  constructed  only  on  the  basis  of  a  catholic 
study  of  the  actual  moral  judgments.  We  must,  as 
Professor  Sharp  has  urged,  get  rid  of  'the  baneful  in- 
fluence of  the  personal  equation ' ;  we  must  add  to  the 
'  introspective '  method  the  '  objective  '  method.  "  The 
student  of  ethics  has  not  finished  his  work  until  he  has 
made  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  moral  judgments  of 


36  Introduction 

examples  of  all  types  of  human  nature." l  "  How  to 
evolve  from  this  multiplicity  of  apparently  incompatible 
principles  a  consistent  and  universally  valid  system  of 
moral  judgments  ...  is  a  question  for  what  may  be 
termed  logical  or  systematic,  as  opposed  to  psychological, 
ethics."  2  And,  in  Mr  Balfour's  words,  "  all  that  a 
moralist  can  do  with  regard  to  ethical  first  principles 
is  not  to  prove  them  or  deduce  them,  but  to  render  them 
explicit  if  they  are  implicit,  clear  if  they  are  obscure."  3 
That  there  is  a  common  element  in  these  as  in  all  other 
classes  of  judgments,  whether  of  value  or  of  fact, — or,  in 
other  words,  that  experience  is  rational, — is  the  common 
assumption  of  science  and  philosophy  alike. 

This  leads  to  the  second  misunderstanding,  namely, 
that  it  is  possible,  in  the  normative  sciences,  to  transcend 
the  sphere  of  common-sense  or  ordinary  judgment,  and 
to  discover,  beyond  that  sphere,  an  absolute  norm  or 
standard  with  which  we  can  then  compare,  and,  accord- 
ing to  the  result  of  our  comparison,  establish  or  invali- 
date the  findings  of  common- sense.  That  is,  of  course, 
impossible,  and  contradicts  the  idea  of  science  in 
general,  if  not  also  of  philosophy.  All  science  is,  it  is 
true,  a  criticism  of  common-sense ;  but  it  is  an  immanent 
criticism,  a  self-criticism.  There  is  no  transcending 
common-sense,  no  leaving  it  behind.  If  common-sense 
were  not  already  rational — in  a  measure  actually  so,  and 
in  posse  perfectly  so — no  science  (and  no  philosophy) 
would  be  possible.  It  is  only  through  the  comparison 
of  the  ordinary  judgments  of  worth  with  one  another, 
that  ethics  and  the  other  normative  sciences  come  into 
existence.  It  is  never  possible  to  compare  our  ordinary 
judgments  of  worth  with  an  external  and  extraordinary 
standard  of  value.  The  criticism  of  common-sense  is 
always  immanent,  never  transcendent.  The  problem  is 
to  find  the  centre  of  the  circle  of  judgment  —  moral, 

1  Philosophical  Review,  vol.  \.  p.  287.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  288. 

3  A  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  Appendix,  p.  353. 


The  Method  of  Ethics  37 

Aesthetic,  or  logical,  and  from  that  centre  to  describe 
the  circle ;  and  this  centre  must  lie  within,  not  without, 
the  circle  whose  centre  it  is !  The  ethical  thinker  must 
always,  with  Aristotle,  come  back  to  common-sense,  and, 
leaving  it  to  the  metaphysician  to  investigate  the  pos- 
sibility of  any  more  ambitious  explanation  of  its  judg- 
ments, content  himself  with  the  Aristotelian,  which  is 
also  the  Socratic,  effort  to  interrogate  the  moral  common- 
sense  of  mankind,  and,  by  interrogating  it,  to  make  it 
coherent  and  self-consistent.  Common-sense,  thus  made 
coherent  and  self-consistent,  is  science. 

To  sum  up :  Ethics  is  the  science  of  the  good.  As 
distinguished  from  the  natural  sciences,  or  the  sciences 
of  the  actual,  it  is  a  normative  or  regulative  science, 
a  science  of  the  ideal.  The  question  of  ethical  science 
is  not,  "What  is  ?  but,  What  ought  to  be  ?  As  the  science 
of  the  good,  it  is  the  science  par  excellence  of  the  ideal 
and  the  ought.  Its  problem  is  the  interpretation  and  ex- 
planation of  our  judgments  of  ethical  value,  as  the  problems 
of  aesthetics  and  of  logic  are  respectively  the  interpreta- 
tion and  explanation  of  our  judgments  of  aesthetic  and 
of  logical  or  intellectual  value.  This  task  ethics  seeks  to 
accomplish  by  investigating  the  ultimate  criterion  or  com- 
mon measure  of  moral  value,  the  true  norm  or  standard 
of  ethical  appreciation.  What,  it  asks,  is  the  ultimate 
good  in  human  life  ?  To  what  common  denominator 
can  the  many  so-called  '  goods  '  of  life  be  reduced  ?  Why, 
in  the  last  analysis,  is  life  judged  to  be  worth  living  ? 

LITERATURE. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  In  trod. ,  ch.  L,  ii. 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  iii. 

H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  i.  §§  1-3. 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Introd. 

L.  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  ch.  i. 

S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  i.  ch.  i.,  iii. 

Wundt,  Ethik,  Einleitung  (Eng.  tr.,  vol.  i.  pp.  1-20). 

Paulsen,  System  dcr  Elhik,  Einleitung. 

Hoffding,  Ethik,  pp.  1-19. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    BASIS. 

1.  Necessity  of  psychological  basis. — Ethics,  as  the 
normative  science  of  conduct  and  character,  must  be  based 
upon  a  psychology,  or  natural  science,  of  the  moral  life. 
Inadequacies  in  ethical  theory  will  be  found  to  be  largely 
traceable  to  inadequacy  in  the  underlying  psychology. 
Kant,  indeed,  seeks  to  separate  ethics  from  psychology, 
and  to  establish  it  as  a  metaphysic  of  the  pure  reason. 
But  even  Kant's  ethical  theory  is  based  upon  a  psy- 
chology. Abstracting  from  all  the  other  elements  of 
man's  nature,  Kant  conceives  him  as  a  purely  rational 
being,  a  reason  energising ;  and  it  is  to  this  abstract- 
ness  and  inadequacy  in  his  psychology  that  we  must 
trace  the  abstractness  and  inadequacy  of  the  Kantian 
ethics.  So  impossible  is  it  for  ethics  to  escape  psychology. 
As  Aristotle  maintained  in  ancient  times,  and  Butler 
in  modern,  the  question,  What  is  the  characteristic 
excellence  or  proper  life  of  man  ?  raises  the  previous 
question,  What  is  the  nature  and  constitution  of  man, 
whose  characteristic  life  and  excellence  we  seek  to 
describe  ? 

Let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the  connection  be- 
tween ethics  and  psychology,  as  we  can  trace  it  in  the 
history  of  ethical  thought.  In  both  ancient  and  modern 
thought  we  find  two  main  types  of  ethical  theory,  which 
affiliate  themselves  to  two  main  psychological  doctrines. 


TJie  Psychological  Basis  39 

This  affiliation  is  even  more  explicit  in  ancient  than  in 
modern  ethics.  Plato  and  Aristotle  have  each  a  double 
representation  of  the  virtuous  life,  corresponding  to  the 
dualism  which  they  discover  in  man's  nature  —  a  lower 
and  a  higher  life,  according  as  the  lower  or  the  higher 
nature  finds  play.  Man's  nature  consists,  they  hold,  of 
a  rational  and  an  irrational  or  sentient  part ;  and  while 
the  ordinary  life  of  virtue  is  represented  by  Plato  as  a 
harmonious  life  of  all  the  parts  in  obedience  to  reason — 
the  city  of  Mansoul  being  like  a  well-ordered  State  in 
which  due  subordination  is  enforced,  and  by  Aristotle  as 
a  life  of  all  the  parts  (irrational  included)  in  accordance 
with  right  reason,  yet  both  conceive  the  highest  or  ideal 
life  as  a  life  of  pure  reason,  or  intellectual  contemplation. 
Thus  both  resolving  human  nature  into  a  rational  and  an 
irrational  element,  both  give  two  representations  of  virtue 
and  goodness.  The  life  may  be  good  in  form,  but  bad 
in  content — a  content  of  unreason  moulded  by  reason ; 
or  it  may  be  entirely  good — its  content  as  well  as  its 
form  may  be  rational. 

This  psychological  and  ethical  dualism  is  further  em- 
phasised by  the  Stoics  and  Epicureans,  who  had  been 
anticipated  by  the  Cynics  and  the  Cyrenaics  respec- 
tively. The  one  school,  making  reason  supreme,  either 
condemns  or  entirely  subordinates  the  life  of  sensibility ; 
the  other,  making  sensibility  supreme,  either  excludes  or 
entirely  subordinates  the  life  of  reason.  The  same  two 
types  may  be  traced  in  modern  ethical  theory — the  ethics 
of  pure  reason  in  Kant  and  the  Intuitionists,  the  ethics 
of  sensibility  in  the  Utilitarian  and  Evolutionary  schools. 

The  abstractness  of  both  ethical  theories  is  traceable 
to  the  abstractness  of  the  underlying  psychology.  The 
half-view  of  human  life  rests  upon  a  half-view  of  human 
nature.  The  true  ethical  life  must  be  the  life  of  the 
whole  man,  of  the  moral  person.  Conduct  is  the  exponent 
of  character,  and  character  is  the  exponent  of  personality. 
If  we  would  discover  the  life  of  man  in  its  unity  and 


40  Introduction 

entirety,  we  must  see  the  nature  of  man  in  its  unity  and 
entirety.  We  must  penetrate  beneath  the  dualism  of 
reason  and  sensibility — of  reason  and  unreason — to  their 
underlying  unity.  The  ethical  point  of  view  is  neither 
reason  nor  sensibility,  but  will,  as  the  expression  of  the 
true  and  total  self.  Plato  had  a  glimpse  of  this  unity 
when  he  spoke  of  Bv/uiog  as  carrying  out  the  behests  of 
reason  in  the  government  of  the  passions  and  appetites. 
Aristotle  spoke  more  explicitly  of  will.  But  both,  like 
their  modern  successors,  insisted  on  construing  man's 
life  in  terms  either  of  reason  or  of  sensibility,  giving 
us  an  account  of  the  intellectual  or  of  the  sentient 
life,  but  not  of  the  moral  life — not  of  the  total  life  of 
man  as  man.  In  will  we  find  the  sought-for  unity,  the 
focal  point  of  all  man's  complex  being,  the  characteristic 
and  distinguishing  feature  of  his  nature,  which  gives  us 
the  clue  to  his  characteristic  life.  Man  is  not  a  merely 
sentient  being,  nor  is  he  pure  reason  energising.  He 
is  will;  and  his  life  is  that  activity  of  will  in  which 
both  reason  and  sensibility  are,  as  elements,  contained, 
and  by  whose  most  subtle  chemistry  they  are  inextri- 
cably interfused. 

2.  Involuntary  activity :  its  various  forms. — The 
moral  life  being  the  life  of  will,  we  must  endeavour 
to  reach  a  psychology  of  will.  But  we  must  approach 
volition  gradually  and  from  the  outside.  Voluntary  pre- 
supposes involuntary  activity.  Volition  implies  a  con- 
ception of  an  end,  purpose,  or  intention.  But  we  must 
execute  movements  before  we  can  plan  or  intend  them. 
The  original  stock  of  movements  with  which  the  will 
starts  on  its  life  must  be  acquired  before  the  appearance 
of  will  on  the  stage  of  human  life.  "  The  involuntary 
activity  forms  the  basis  and  the  content  of  the  voluntary. 
The  will  is  in  no  way  creative,  but  only  modifying  and 
selective." * 

1  Hoffding,  Psychology,  p.  330  (Eng.  tr.) 


The  Psychological  Basis  41 

These  primary  and  involuntary  acts  are  of  various 
kinds;  some  are  the  results  of  the  constitution  of  the 
physical  organism,  others  imply  a  mental  reaction.  The 
most  important  are  the  following:  (1)  Eeflex  and  auto- 
matic, like  the  beating  of  the  heart  or  the  moving  of  the 
eyelids.  These  are  purely  physiological  and  unconscious. 

(2)  Spontaneous  or  random  movements, — the  involuntary 
and   partly   unconscious,   partly   conscious,   discharge   of 
superfluous  energy,  like  the   movements   of   the   infant. 

(3)  Sensori-motor  or  semi-reflex,  the  conscious  but  non- 
voluntary  adaptation  to  environment, — the  automatic  re- 
sponse to  external  stimuli.      (4)  Instinctive,  not,  like  (3), 
the  mere  momentary  response  to  a  particular  stimulus, 
but  complex  activities,   implying   previous   organisation, 
thus  having  their  source  within,  in  the  motor  centres, 
rather  than  in  the  external  stimulus,  and  being  guided 
by  reference  to  a  'silent'  or  unconscious  end. 

Now,  all  these  movements  are,  or  may  be,  accompanied 
by  sensations,  which  may  accordingly  be  called  '  motor- 
sensations.'  Further,  of  these  psychical  correlates  of 
the  physical  movements, — their  'feels' — we  preserve 
a  memory-image,  which  has  been  called  a  '  kin  aesthetic 
idea.'  We  may,  therefore,  add  to  the  sensori-motor  (5) 
ideo-motor  activities,  which  embrace  the  great  mass  of 
the  higher  actions  of  our  life.  The  movement  here  ensues 
directly  upon  the  idea  or  representation  of  it,  or  rather 
of  the  sensation  attending  it,  as  in  the  former  case  it 
follows  from  the  sensation  itself.  There  is  still  no  voli- 
tion. "  We  are  aware  of  nothing  between  the  conception 
and  the  execution.  .  .  .  We  think  the  act,  and  it  is 
done."  ]  An  extreme  case  of  ideo-motor  action  is  found 
in  the  hypnotic  trance,  but  the  phenomenon  is  of  constant 
occurrence  in  ordinary  life.  To  remember  an  engagement 
at  the  hour  appointed  is,  in  general,  to  execute  it.  The 
business  of  life  could  never  go  on,  if  we  deliberated  and 
decided  about  each  of  its  several  actions.  Instead  of 

1  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  p.  522. 


42  Introduction 

this,  we  surrender  ourselves  to  the  train  of  ideas,  and  let 
them  bear  us  on  our  way.  For  ideas  are  essentially 
impulsive — icttes-forces.  When  an  idea  fills  the  mind, 
the  corresponding  movement  follows  immediately.  Even 
when  two  such  ideas  occupy  the  mind,  when  we  are 
attracted  in  two  different  directions,  the  one  movement 
may  be  inhibited  through  the  idea  of  the  other.  There 
may  be  a  block,  and  a  clearance  of  the  way,  without  the 
interference  of  any  fiat  of  will, — a  knot  which  unties 
itself,  a  struggle  of  ideas  in  which  the  strongest  survives, 
and  results  in  its  appropriate  movement. 

3.  Voluntary  activity  :  how  distinguished  from  in- 
voluntary.— All  this  provision  there  is  for  movement — 
partly  in  the  nervous  system,  partly  in  the  mind  itself — 
without  any  interposition  of  volition.  This  last  is  rather 
of  the  nature  of  inhibition  of  the  natural  tendency  to 
movement — the  regulation  and  organisation  of  move- 
ments— than  origination.  The  beginnings  are  given  by 
nature.  But  these  primary  movements  and  their  sensa- 
tional correlates  are  vague  and  diffuse ;  they  constitute  a 
'  motor-continuum,'  which  is  gradually  made  discrete  and 
definite.1  This  occurs  largely,  as  we  have  seen,  in- 
voluntarily. A  movement  is  determined  by  the  idea 
of  the  movement,  that  is,  by  the  anticipation  of  the 
movement's  sensible  effects,  without  the  explicit  inter- 
vention of  will.  Now  if  there  be  such  a  thing  as 
voluntary  activity,  its  source  must  be  found  in  the 
manipulation  of  the  ideas  of  movements  already  made. 
In  this  sense  all  action  is  ideo-motor ;  its  source  is  in  an 
idea  which  at  the  moment  fills  the  consciousness.  The 
question  of  the  nature  of  volition,  therefore,  resolves 
itself  into  this :  What  is  the  mind's  power  over  its  ideas  ? 
What  is  the  genesis  of  the  moving  idea  in  the  highest 
and  most  complex  activities  ? 

The  function  of  will  is  obviously  the  regulation  and 

1  Cf.  Ward,  Art.  "  Psychology,"  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  9th  ed. 


The  Psychological  Basis  43 

organisation  of  activity,  through  the  regulation  and  organi- 
sation of  those  impulsive  tendencies  to  action  of  which 
man  is  naturally  the  subject.  We  shall  perhaps  obtain 
the  best  idea  of  what  the  life  of  mere  impulse  without 
volition  would  be,  by  considering  the  case  of  a  volitional 
life  in  which  the  will  is  most  in  abeyance.  The  life 
of  the  habitual  drunkard,  for  example,  is  a  life  whose 
notorious  defect  is  the  absence  of  self-control ;  the  man 
is  the  slave  of  the  idea  of  the  moment,  the  vivid  repre- 
sentation of  the  pleasures  of  gratified  appetite  or  of  social 
excitement.  This  idea  moves  him  to  act  in  the  line 
of  its  guidance,  and  its  continual  recurrence  carries  with 
it,  as  its  natural  and  immediate  consequence,  a  life  of 
debauchery.  Such  a  life  is  the  nearest  approach,  in 
human  experience,  to  that  of  the  animal;  such  a  man, 
we  say,  '  makes  a  beast  of  himself.'  The  tragedy  of  it 
consists  in  the  fact  of  the  abdication  of  the  will,  in  the 
enslavement  by  impulse  of  him  who  should  have  been  its 
master.  The  case  of  the  '  fixed  idea '  in  insanity  or  in 
hypnotism  would  illustrate  even  better  a  life  of  impulse 
without  will.  Here  will  seems  to  be  simply  eliminated, 
and  the  man  becomes  the  prey  of  the  idea  of  the  moment 
or  the  hour.  Whatever  is  suggested  in  the  line  of  the 
dominant  idea,  he  does  forthwith ;  his  life  is  a  series 
of  simple  reactions  to  such  ideational  stimulation. 

A  life  guided  by  will,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  life  in 
which  each  impelling  idea,  as  it  presents  itself,  is  dealt 
with,  and  subdued  to  a  larger  ideal  or  conception  of  life's 
total  meaning  and  purpose  ;  in  which  for  action  of  the 
reflex  type  there  is  substituted  action  which  is  the  result 
of  deliberate  choice ;  in  which,  instead  of  the  coercive 
guidance  of  the  immediately  dominant  idea,  we  have  the 
guidance  that  comes  from  a  reflective  consideration  of  the 
relative  claims  of  the  several  ideas  which  now  appear  on 
the  field  of  consciousness  and  compete  for  the  mastery. 
Here  is  the  unique  and  characteristic  element  of  human 
activity,  in  virtue  of  which  we  attribute  will  to  man,  and 


44  Introduction 

call  his  life  a  moral  life.  Even  voluntary  activity,  in  the 
last  analysis,  belongs  to  the  reflex  type,  or  is  ideo-motor ; 
but  such  is  the  new  complexity  of  the  process  that  it 
deserves  a  new  name.  A  man  does  not,  or  at  any  rate 
need  not,  react  as  the  mere  animal  reacts.  The  action  of 
the  animal  is  a  mere  immediate  reaction,  and  can  there- 
fore be  predicted,  the  stimulus  being  given.  But  man  is 
not,  like  the  animal,  simply  the  creature  of  impulse,  even 
of  that  organised  impulse  which  we  call  instinct.  He  is 
an  animal,  a  creature  of  impulse,  played  upon  by  the 
varied  influences  of  his  environment.  But  he  is  also,  or 
may  be,  '  the  master  of  impulse  as  the  rider  is  master  of 
his  horse ' ;  his  life  may  be  the  product  of  a  single 
central  purpose  which  governs  its  every  act ;  it  is  his  to 
live  not  in  the  immediate  present  or  in  the  immediate 
future,  but  to  '  look  before  and  after,'  to  forecast  the 
remote  as  well  as  the  near  future,  and  to  act  in  the  light 
and  under  the  guidance  of  such  a  far-reaching  survey  of 
his  life. 

Volition,  then,  consists  in  the  direction  or  guidance  of 
given  impulsive  tendencies  or  propensities  to  act.  The 
function  of  will  is  not  to  create,  but  to  direct  and  control. 
The  impulsive  basis  of  volition,  like  the  sensational  basis 
of  knowledge,  is  given  ;  the  former  is  the  datum  of  the 
moral  life,  as  the  latter  is  the  datum  of  the  intellectual 
life.  Man  is,  to  begin  with  and  always,  a  sentient  being, 
a  creature  of  animal  sensibility.  Such  sensibility  is  the 
matter  of  which  will  is  the  form,  the  manifold  of  which 
will  is  the  unity.  That  organisation  of  impulse  which 
is  already  accomplished  for  the  animal  in  the  shape  of 
instinct,  has  to  be  accomplished  by  man  himself.  The 
animal,  in  following  its  impulses,  fulfils  entirely  its  life's 
purpose ;  its  impulses  are  just  the  paths  that  bring  it 
securely  to  that  end.  We  do  not  criticise  its  life,  impul- 
sive though  it  is ;  it  is  as  perfect  and  true  to  its  inten- 
tion as  the  growth  of  the  plant  or  the  revolutions  of  the 
spheres.  It  looks  not  before  or  after  :  it  '  does  not  ask 


The  Psychological  Basis  45 

to  see  the  distant  goal,'  the  '  whither '  of  the  forces  that 
master  it — '  one  step  enough '  for  it.  Its  life  is  blind, 
or,  at  any  rate,  near-sighted,  but  unerring.  Its  path  is 
narrow,  but  straight  to  the  goal.  But  to  man  is  given  an 
eye  to  see  his  life's  path  stretching  before  him  into  the 
far  spaces  of  the  future,  and  to  look  back  along  all  the  way 
he  has  come.  His  moral  life  is,  like  his  intellectual  life, 
self -conducted.  The  animal  is  born  into  the  world  fully 
equipped  for  its  life's  journey,  everything  arranged  for  it, 
each  step  of  the  path  marked  out.  Man  has  to  do  almost 
everything  for  himself — to  learn  the  intellectual  and  the 
moral  meaning  of  his  life,  to  put  himself  to  school,  and 
above  all,  from  the  beginning  even  to  the  end,  to  school 
himself.  As  out  of  the  vague,  confused,  presentational 
continuum  he  has  to  constitute,  by  his  own  intellectual 
activity,  a  world  of  objects,  so,  out  of  the  motor-con- 
tinuum of  vague  desire  he  has  to  constitute,  by  his  own 
moral  activity,  a  system  of  ends.  Each  sphere  is  a 
kind  of  chaos  until  he  reads  into  it,  or  recognises  in  it, 
the  cosmos  of  intelligence  and  of  will.  The  complete 
determination  and  definition  of  the  one  would  be  the 
truth,  of  the  other  the  good.  Where  the  animal  acts 
blindly  or  from  immediate  and  uncriticised  impulse,  man 
can  act  with  reflection  and  from  deliberate  choice.  Where 
the  animal's  life  is  the  outcome  of  forces  or  tendencies  of 
which  it  is  merely  '  aware,'  man  '  knows '  or  discerns  the 
meaning  of  the  tendencies  he  experiences,  and  acts,  or 
may  act,  in  the  light  and  by  the  force  of  such  rational 
insight.  Where  the  cause  of  the  animal's  activity  is  to  be 
found  without  itself,  in  the  appeal  made  to  it  by  its  cir- 
cumstances or  environment,  in  the  '  push  and  pull '  of 
impulsive  forces,  the  true  cause  of  human  activities  must 
be  sought  within  the  man  himself,  in  his  critical  con- 
sideration of  the  outward  appeal,  in  the  superior  strength 
of  his  rational  spirit. 

4.  The  process  of  volition. — We   must   note   more 


46  Introduction 

closely  the  nature  of  the  process  of  volition.  We  may  dis- 
tinguish three  stages,  (a)  There  is  the  temporary  inhibi- 
tion of  all  the  impulsive  tendencies, — the  pause  or  inter- 
val during  which  the  alternative  activities  are  suspended. 
We  can  hardly  exaggerate  the  psychological  importance 
of  the  interval.  It  is  this  arrest  of  activity  that  breaks 
the  immediacy  and  continuity  of  the  merely  reflex  or 
ideo-motor  life.  If  the  drunkard  only  paused,  and  did 
not  immediately  proceed  to  realise  his  idea  of  gratifi- 
cation, he  would  probably  not  be  a  drunkard;  but  he 
rushes  on  his  fate.  He  who  hesitates,  he  who  can  effect 
the  pause,  in  such  a  case,  is  not  lost,  but  almost  saved.1 
The  first  step  towards  the  control  of  animal  impulse, 
towards  the  subjection  of  a  master-idea,  is  to  postpone 
its  realisation.  The  pause  does  not  prejudge  the  question 
of  our  ultimate  attitude  to  the  impulse  in  question ;  all 
that  it  implies  is  that  we  shall  not  follow  the  impulse  in 
the  meantime,  or  until  we  have  considered  its  merits, 
and  compared  them  with  those  of  other  alternative  im- 
pulses. (&)  There  is  deliberation,  reflection  upon  the 
various  possible  courses  in  the  circumstances,  comparison 
and  criticism  of  the  results  of  following  each  competing 
impulse,  a  study  of  the  entire  situation,  a  self-recollection, 
a  '  gathering  oneself  together/  a  '  trying  of  our  ways/  a 
comparison  of  this  and  that  possible  future  with  our 
present  and  our  past,  a  testing  of  the  course  proposed  by 
the  touchstone  of  our  prevailing  aspirations,  of  our  domin- 
ant aims  in  life,  of  our  permanent  and  larger  and  deeper 
as  well  as  our  fleeting,  momentary,  superficial,  though 
clamant,  self,  a  swerving  from  one  side  to  the  other,  a 
weighing  of  impulse  in  the  scales  of  reflection ;  and,  sooner 
or  later,  (c)  a  decision  or  choice,  the  acceptance  of  one  or 
other  of  the  conflicting  ideal  futures,  the  surrender  to  it 
in  all  the  strength  of  its  now  increased  impulsive  force, 
the  identification  of  the  self  with  it,  and  its  realisation. 
The  ideal  future  thus  chosen  is  called  the  end  or  motive 

1  Cf .  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  ch.  xxvi. 


The  Psychological  Basis  47 

of  the  resulting  activity.  For,  once  grasped,  it  becomes 
the  constraining  stimulus  to  action,  the  idea  which  moves 
us.  In  it  is  now  focussed  the  energy  of  the  entire  man ; 
it  and  he  are,  in  a  real  sense,  one.  It  is  thus  that 
ends  are  the  exponents  of  character,  that  life  attains  to 
unity  and  system ;  it  is  thus  that  we  conceive  of  the 
perfect  life  as  one  guided  by  a  single  comprehensive 
purpose,  which  runs  through  its  entire  course,  and, 
gathering  up  within  itself  all  its  varied  activities,  im- 
parts to  each  its  own  significance. 

The  entire  process  is  one  of  selective  attention.  In 
a  sense,  even  the  animal  selects :  only  certain  stimuli 
excite  it — those,  namely,  which  find  in  it  a  corresponding 
susceptibility.  And,  in  man's  case,  the  original  force  of 
the  momentarily  clamant  idea  is  a  result  of  what  may  be 
called  natural  selection.  It  is  because  he  is  the  man  he 
is,  that  this  particular  idea  has  for  him  such  impulsive 
force ;  for  another  man,  the  same  idea  might  have  no 
impulsive  force  at  all  This,  too,  is  a  case  of  attention, 
but  it  is  only  its  rudimentary  or  involuntary  form.  The 
animal,  or  the  man  who  does  not  pause  to  deliberate  and 
choose,  acts  from  a  kind  of  fascination  or  charm.  He 
has  no  eyes  to  see  other  paths,  no  ears  to  hear  other 
guides ;  he  seems  to  himself  to  be  shut  up  to  this  one 
course.  But  there  is  another  kind  of  selection,  as  there 
is  another  kind  of  attention ;  and  the  voluntary  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  involuntary  by  the  element  of  de- 
liberation. The  process  of  volition  is  the  process  of 
the  variation  and  oscillation  of  attention  from  one  aspect 
of  the  practical  situation  to  another.  It  is  thus  that,  as 
the  perspective  changes,  and  ideas  now  in  the  foreground 
of  consciousness  retreat  into  the  background,  impulsive 
force  is  transferred  from  one  idea  to  another,  and  the 
resulting  activity  is  the  outcome  of  a  '  conjunct  view  of 
the  whole  case.'  The  function  of  will,  therefore,  is,  by 
such  a  distribution  of  attention,  to  constitute  the  end  or 
motive  of  activity.  This  end  may  at  first  be  the  weakest 


48  Introduction 

idea  of  all,  the  least  fascinating,  the  one  which,  of  its  own 
original  resource,  would  be  least  likely  to  move  us ;  yet 
through  the  medium  of  deliberation,  through  the  strong 
intrinsic  appeal  it  makes  to  the  whole  self,  it  may  gather 
strength  while  the  others  as  gradually  and  surely  lose  their 
early  force,  until,  in  the  end  of  the  day,  in  the  final  deliber- 
ate choice,  we  find  that  the  last  is  first,  and  the  first  last. 
Further,  since  our  several  acts  of  choice  are  not  isolated 
but  organically  connected  with  one  another,  the  process 
may  be  described  finally  as  an  activity  of  moral  apper- 
ception or  integration.  The  activity  of  will  is  essentially 
an  adjustment  of  the  new  to  the  old,  and  of  the  old  to  the 
new.  Just  as,  in  the  case  of  any  real  addition  to  our  in- 
tellectual life,  the  process  is  not  one  of  mere  addition  of 
new  to  old  material,  but  means  rather  the  grafting  of  the 
new  upon  the  old  tree  of  knowledge,  in  such  wise  that 
the  old  is  itself  renewed  with  the  fresh  blood  of  the  new 
conception ;  so,  in  the  case  of  any  real  moral  advance, 
any  fresh  act  of  choice,  the  new  must  be  assimilated  to 
the  old,  and  the  old  to  the  new.  For  it  is  the  entire 
man — the  self — that  makes  the  choice,  and,  in  doing  so, 
he  takes  up  a  new  moral  attitude ;  the  entire  moral 
being  undergoes  a  subtle  but  real  change.  The  house, 
whether  of  our  intellectual  or  of  our  moral  nature,  must 
be  swept  and  garnished,  and  made  ready  for  its  new 
guest ;  and  if  that  guest  be  unworthy,  the  stain  of  his 
presence  will  be  felt  throughout  the  secret  chambers  of 
the  soul.  Or,  to  drop  metaphor,  and  to  state  the  matter 
more  accurately,  we  must  apperceive  the  contemplated 
act,  place  it  in  the  context  of  our  life's  purposes,  and, 
directly  or  indirectly,  with  more  or  with  less  explicit 
consciousness,  correlate  it  with  the  master-purpose  of 
our  life.  It  is  thus  that  an  originally  weak  impulse 
may  be  strengthened  by  being  brought  into  the  main 
stream  of  our  life's  total  purpose.  A  choice  is  therefore 
an  organisation,  which  is  at  the  same  time  an  integration 
or  assimilation,  of  impulse. 


The  Psychological  Basis  49 

5.  Nature  and  character.  — This  analysis  of  the  pro- 
cess of  volition  prepares  us  to  understand  the  distinction 
between  nature,  disposition,  or  temperament,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  character  on  the  other.  The  former  is  our 
original  endowment  or  equipment,  the  given  raw  material 
of  moral  life ;  the  natural,  undisciplined,  unformed,  un- 
moralised  man.  The  latter  is  acquired,  the  fruit  of 
effort  and  toil ;  the  spiritual,  disciplined,  formed,  moral- 
ised man. 

From  the  first,  the  true  spring  of  activity  is  within 
rather  than  without,  in  the  unformed  self  of  the  man 
rather  than  in  his  external  circumstances  or  environ- 
ment. It  is  because  the  man  is  what  he  is,  that  any 
particular  stimulus  is  a  stimulus  to  him.  The  'en- 
vironment '  is  his  environment ;  to  another  it  would 
be  none.  Susceptibility  determines  and  constitutes 
environment,  rather  than  environment  susceptibility. 
Given  a  certain  type  of  susceptibility,  however,  a  great 
deal  depends  upon  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  corre- 
sponding environment,  to  stimulate  that  susceptibility. 
In  the  case  of  a  merely  natural  or  animal  being,  a 
being  without  a  character  or  the  possibility  of  its  for- 
mation, everything  depends  upon  the  presence  or  absence 
of  such  a  stimulating  environment;  the  life  of  such  a 
being  is  the  product  of  this  action  and  reaction.  Man 
himself  is,  at  first,  such  a  merely  natural  being,  a  creature 
of  impulse  and  instinct,  an  animal  rather  than  a  man. 
He,  too,  is  nature's  offspring,  a  veritable  "  part  of  nature, 
which  moves  in  him  and  sways  him  hither  and  thither  ";  * 
and  were  there  not  in  him  a  higher  strength  than 
nature's,  he  would  remain  to  the  end  "  the  slave  of 
nature."  Did  his  nature  remain  as  it  originally  is,  his 
would  be  a  merely  natural  or  animal  life.  If  he  re- 
mained in  this  '  state  of  nature,'  his  life  would  either 
have  no  unity  or  order  at  all,  and  be  swayed  by  each 
and  every  impulse  as  it  came ;  or  it  would  attain  merely 

1  S.  S.  Laurie,  Ethica,  p.  22  (2nd  ed.) 
U 


50  Introduction 

to  the  unity  of  the  animal  life,  where  the  organisation 
of  impulse  is  the  work  of  instinct.  But  for  man  there 
is  the  higher  possibility  of  attaining  to  an  ethical  unity, 
to  the  organisation  of  natural  impulse  through  self- 
control.  The  unity  of  moral  selfhood  is  of  a  different 
order  from  the  natural  unity  of  force  or  instinct.  As 
Professor  Laurie  puts  it,  man,  as  a  will  or  self,  "  has 
to  do  for  his  own  organism  what  nature  through  neces- 
sary laws  does  for  all  else."  The  '  natural  man/  as  such, 
the  animal  nature  in  man,  is  neither  good  nor  bad,  neither 
moral  nor  immoral,  but  simply  non-moral.  It  is  in  the 
possibility  of  transfiguring  this  natural  animal  life,  and 
making  it  the  instrument  and  expression  of  spiritual 
purpose,  that  morality  consists.  Morality  is  the  forma- 
tion, out  of  this  raw  material  of  nature,  of  a  character. 
The  seething  and  tumultuous  life  of  natural  tendency,  of 
appetite  and  passion,  affection  and  desire,  must  be  reduced 
to  some  common  human  measure.  Man  may  not  con- 
tinue to  live  the  animal  life  of  unchecked  impulse,  borne 
ever  on  the  full  tide  of  natural  sensibility.  That  life  oi 
nature  which  he  too  feels  surging  up  within  him  has  to 
be  directed  and  controlled ;  it  must  be  subjected  to  the 
moulding  influence  of  reflective  purpose.  For  man  is 
not,  like  the  animal,  merely  '  aware '  of  tendencies  that 
sway  him ;  he  '  knows '  them,  and  whither  they  lead. 
His  is  a  life  of  reflection  and  judgment,  as  well  as  of 
immediate  impulse  ;  and  just  because  he  can  reflect  upon 
and  judge  his  impulses,  he  can  regulate  and  master  them. 
Where  the  animal  is  guided  by  primary  feeling,  man 
is  guided  by  feeling  so  moralised  or  rationalised  that 
we  call  it  '  sentiment '  or  c  moral  idea.'  It  is  only  thus, 
by  taking  in  hand  his  original  nature  or  disposition,  and 
gathering  up  its  manifold  elements  into  the  unity  of  a 
consistent  character,  that  man  becomes  truly  man.  He 
must  thus  '  come  to  himself/  however  long  and  laborious 
be  the  way. 

The  way  from  nature  to  character  is  laborious,  and 


The  Psychological  Basis  51 

full  of  effort.  "Before  virtue  the  gods  have  put  toil 
and  effort."  xa^£7r"  r"  *aAa.  "  Strait  is  the  gate,  and 
narrow  the  way  "  of  the  life  of  virtue.  Tor  the  voluntary 
or  moral  life  is,  in  its  essence,  we  have  seen,  the  inhibi- 
tion of  natural,  or  impulsive  and  instinctive,  tendencies. 
It  is  a  turning  of  attention  in  another  than  its  natural 
direction,  an  effort,  by  distributing  over  a  wider  field  the 
consciousness  originally  focussed  on  a  narrow  area,  to 
change  its  focus  from  one  restricted  area  to  another. 
This  substitution  of  voluntary  for  involuntary  attention 
is  difficult,  and  most  difficult  at  first.  The  present  and 
immediate,  the  natural  or  '  attuent,' x  life  is  engrossing, 
clamant,  fascinating.  The  lines  of  impulse  and  instinct, 
the  lines  of  nature,  are  the  lines  of  least  resistance ; 
thought  and  '  cool '  self-recollection,  the  lines  of  char- 
acter and  virtue,  are  at  first  the  lines  of  greatest  resist- 
ance. The  child  has  to  be  helped  over  the  first  steps  of 
its  moral  life,  just  as  it  has  to  be  helped  to  walk  alone 
both  physically  and  intellectually ;  its  weak  will,  so  soon 
wearied  with  the  strange  effort,  has  to  be  propped  up  by 
appeals  to  the  well-rooted  instincts  of  its  childish  nature. 
Long  afterwards,  the  struggle  still  continues,  and  the 
weariness  returns,  and  still  often  '  old  Adam  is  too  strong 
for  young  Melanchthon,'  and  the  wretched  combatant 
cries  out  for  deliverance  from  the  body  of  this  death. 

But  gradually,  and  in  due  time,  the  deliverance  comes. 
These  pains  and  agonies  are,  in  reality,  the  birth-pangs 
of  a  new  nature  in  the  man.  Gradually  he  experiences 
'the  expulsive  power  of  new  affections/  Character  is 
itself  a  habit  of  will,  and  habit  is  always  easy.  Virtue 
is  not  virtue  until  it  has  become  pleasant.2  It  is  the 
formation  of  character  that  is  difficult ;  the  difficulty 
thereafter  is  to  unform  or  to  reform  it.  For  character 
does  not  consist  in  single  choices,  made  with  difficulty, 

1  We  owe  this  term  to  Professor  Laurie,  who  uses  it  throughout  hi» 
Metaphysica  and  Eihica. 

2  Aristotle,  Nic.  Eth.,  bk.  ii.  ch.  3. 


52  Introduction 

and  after  much  deliberation  and  -weighing  of  the  '  pros ' 
and  '  cons ' ;  it  consists  in  the  formation  of  grooves  along 
which  the  activity  naturally  and  habitually  runs.  He  is 
not,  in  the  highest  sense,  an  honest  man  who  does  an 
honest  act  with  difficulty,  and  who  would  rather  act 
dishonestly.  The  honest  man  is  the  man  to  whom  it 
^ould  be  difficult  and  unnatural  to  act  dishonestly,  the 
man  in  whom  honesty  is  a  '  second  nature.'  Thus  we 
see  how,  since  character  is  itself  a  habit — a  new  and 
acquired  tendency  which  has  supplanted  the  primary 
tendencies  of  the  mere  animal  nature — the  difference 
between  nature  and  character  must  be  a  fleeting  one. 
What  was  at  first,  and  perhaps  for  long,  the  hard-won 
fruit  of  moral  effort,  becomes  later  the  spontaneous  work 
of  the  new  nature  which  has  thus  been  born  within  us. 
Effort  becomes  less  and  less  characteristic  of  the  life  of 
virtue,  self-control  becomes  less  difficult,  as  virtue  be- 
comes a  second  nature.  The  storm  and  stress  of  its 
earlier  struggles  is  followed  by  the  great  calm  of  settled 
and  established  virtue.  The  main  stream  of  our  life, 
the  current  of  our  habitual  activity  and  interest,  carries 
us  with  it.  There  is  no  longer  the  inhibition,  the 
painful  suspense  of  deliberation,  and  the  anxious  choice, 
but  the  even  flow  of  the  great  main  stream.  The 
energies  of  the  will,  which  were  formerly  so  dissipated, 
are  now  found  in  splendid  integration,  and  the  whole 
man  seems  to  live  in  each  individual  act.  If  it  were 
not  that  the  way  of  virtue  is  long,  as  well  as  difficult, 
we  should  be  apt  to  say  that  the  element  of  effort  which 
characterises  its  beginning  is  destined  in  the  end  to  dis- 
appear ;  if  it  were  not  that  there  are  always  new  degrees 
of  virtue  for  even  the  most  virtuous  to  attain,  we  should 
be  inclined  to  say  that  the  path  of  virtue  is  steep  and  dif- 
ficult only  at  the  first.  But  the  ascent  reveals  ever  new 
heights  of  virtue  yet  unattained ;  and  the  effort  of  virtue 
is  measured  by  the  heights  of  the  moral  ideal,  as  well  as 
by  the  heights  of  moral  attainment.  Thus,  what  at  a 


Tlie  Psychological  Basis  53 

lower  level  was  character  becomes,  at  the  higher,  again 
mere  nature,  to  be  in  turn  transcended  and  overcome. 
"  We  rise  on  stepping  -  stones  of  our  dead  selves  to 
higher  things."  There  is  no  resting  in  the  life  of  virtue, 
— it  is  a  constant  growth ;  to  stereotype  it,  or  to  arrest 
it  at  any  stage,  however  advanced,  would  be  to  kill  it. 
There  is  always  an  '  old '  man  and  a  '  new ' :  the  very 
new  becomes  old,  and  has  to  die,  and  be  surmounted. 

6.  Limitations  of  volition. — Certain  limitations  of 
the  volitional  life  are  suggested  by  what  has  already 
been  said. 

(a)  The  principle  of  economy  of  will  power  implies 
the  surrender  of  large  tracts  of  our  life  to  mechanism. 
Such  a  surrender  is  made  not  only  in  the  case  of  purely 
physical  activities,  but  also  generally  in  the  case  of  the 
routine  of  daily  life.  To  deliberate  and  choose  about 
such  things  as  which  boot  we  shall  put  on  first,  or  which 
side  of  the  garden-walk  we  shall  take,  is  an  entirely 
gratuitous  assertion  of  our  power  of  volition  :  it  is  the 
mark  of  a  weak  or  diseased,  rather  than  of  a  strong  and 
healthy,  will.  Decision  and  strength  of  character  are 
shown  in  the  choice  of  certain  fixed  lines  of  conduct  in 
such  particulars,  and  in  the  abiding  by  the  choice  once 
made.  Further,  a  great  economy  of  effort  is  secured  by 
the  choice  of  ends  rather  than  of  means.  The  means 
may  require  deliberation  and  choice,  but,  to  a  very  large 
extent,  they  are  already  chosen  in  the  end.  And  in 
general  we  may  say  that  the  details  of  an  act  which, 
taken  as  a  whole,  is  strictly  voluntary,  may  be  cases  of 
merely  ideo-motor  activity;  the  operation  may  proceed 
with  perfect  smoothness,  each  step  of  it  suggesting  the 
next  in  turn,  without  any  intervention  of  will. 

(6)  The  continuity  of  our  moral  life  also  implies  a 
large  surrender  of  its  several  acts  to  mechanism  or  habit. 
The  moral  life  is  not  a  series  of  isolated  choices,  it  is  a 
continuous  and  growing  whole.  As  it  proceeds,  the  sur- 


54  Introduction 

vey  becomes  more  and  more  extended ;  to  use  a  con- 
venient technical  term,  the  individual  act  is  more  and 
more  completely  '  apperceived.'  The  mature  moral  man 
does  not  fight  his  battles  always  over  again — he  brings 
the  individual  act  under  a  conception.  His  life,  instead 
of  being  a  constant  succession  of  fresh  choices,  becomes 
a  more  or  less  complete  system  of  ends,  centring,  im- 
plicitly or  explicitly,  in  one  which  is  supreme.  The 
deliberation  is  chiefly  about  the  placing  of  the  individual 
action  in  its  true  relations  to  the  context  of  this  system, 
about  the  interpretation  of  it  as  a  part  of  this  whole.  In 
general,  we  choose  sections  of  life,  rather  than  the  indi- 
vidual details  which  fill  these  sections.  In  other  words, 
all  men,  even  those  whom  we  call  '  unprincipled,'  have 
certain  principles,  of  which  their  life  is  the  expression. 

Choices  are  not,  I  have  said,  independent ;  they  inevi- 
tably crystallise,  or  rather,  they  are  seeds  which  develop 
and  bear  fruit  in  the  days  and  years  that  follow.  The 
moments  of  our  life  have  not  all  an  equal  moral  signifi- 
cance. Eather,  the  significance  of  our  lives,  for  good  or 
evil,  seems  to  be  determined  by  moments  of  choice  in 
days  and  years  of  even  tenor.  There  are  great  moments 
when  both  good  and  evil  are  set  before  us,  and  we  con- 
sciously and  deliberately  embrace  a  great  end,  or,  with 
no  less  deliberate  consciousness,  reject  it  for  a  lower  and 
less  worthy.  Every  act  is  implicitly  a  case  of  such 
moral  faithfulness  or  unfaithfulness.  But,  in  such  mo- 
ments as  those  of  which  I  now  speak,  the  will  gives 
large  commissions  to  habit,  and  leaves  to  it  the  execu- 
tion. The  commission  is  quickly  given,  its  execution 
takes  long.  The  moral  crises  of  our  lives  are  few,  and 
soon  over;  but  it  seems  as  if  all  the  strength  of  our 
spirit  gathered  itself  up  for  such  supreme  efforts,  and  as 
if  what  follows  in  the  long-drawn  years  were  but  their 
consequence. 

(c)  What  is  generally  called  fixity  of  character  sug- 
gests a  third  important  limitation  of  the  will's  activity. 


The  Psychological  Basis  55 

The  course  of  moral  life,  as  it  proceeds,  seems  to  result 
in  the  establishment  of  certain  fixed  lines  of  conduct  and 
character,  whether  good  or  evil.  Its  course  becomes 
more  and  more  settled ;  law  and  system,  of  one  kind  or 
another,  are  more  and  more  visible  in  it.  The  formation 
of  character  means,  as  we  have  seen,  the  constant  hand- 
ing over  to  habit  of  actions  which  were  at  first  done  with 
deliberation  and  effort.  Association  performs  the  work 
of  intelligence,  impulse  regains  its  sway  over  us,  char- 
acter becomes  second  nature.  We  are  always  forging, 
by  our  acts  of  deliberate  choice,  the  iron  chains  of 
habit.  Otherwise,  there  would  be  no  ground  gained, 
no  fruit  harvested  from  daily  toil  of  will,  no  store 
of  moral  acquisition  laid  up  for  future  years.  Our 
life  would  be  a  Sisyphus'  task,  never  any  nearer  its 
execution.  But,  as  we  roll  it  up,  the  stone  does  remain, 
nay,  tends  still  upwards.  Of  this  gradual  and  almost 
imperceptible  fixation  in  evil  ways,  the  characters  of  Tito 
in  George  Eliot's  Romola,  and  of  Markheim  in  Mr  E.  L. 
Stevenson's  little  story  of  that  name,  are  impressive 
illustrations.  What  is  exemplified  in  such  cases  is  not, 
I  think,  loss  of  will-power  so  much  as  fixity  of  character 
— itself  the  creation  of  will — degradation  of  the  will,  a 
choice,  apparently  final  and  irrevocable,  of  the  lower  and 
the  evil.  This  is  the  tragedy  of  the  story  in  either  case. 
Is  not  this,  again,  the  meaning  of  the  weird  Faust  legend 
which  has  so  impressed  the  imagination  of  Europe  ? 
Faust's  selling  his  soul  to  Mephistopheles,  and  signing 
the  contract  with  his  life's  blood,  is  no  single  transaction, 
done  deliberately,  on  one  occasion ;  rather,  this  is  the 
lurid  meaning  of  a  life  which  consists  of  innumerable 
individual  acts, — the  life  of  evil  means  this.  And,  at 
the  other  extreme  of  the  moral  scale,  does  not  holiness 
mean  a  great  and  final  exaltation  of  will,  its  perfect  and 
established  union  with  the  higher  and  the  good,  fixity  of 
character  once  more  ?  These  infinite  possibilities  of  evil 
and  of  goodness  seem  to  be  the  implicate  of  an  infinite 


56  Introduction 

moral  ideal ;  they  are  the  moral  equivalents  of  the 
heaven  and  hell  of  the  religious  imagination.  What  is 
will  itself  but  just  this  power  or  possibility,  infinite  as 
our  nature,  for  each  of  us  in  the  direction  either  of  good- 
ness or  of  evil  ?  Between  these  extremes  moves  the 
ordinary  average  life  of  the  comfortable  citizen.  The 
strongest  and  deepest  natures  are  the  saints  and  the 
sinners ;  the  weaker  and  more  superficial  fluctuate  irreso- 
lute between  the  poles  of  moral  life. 

On  the  side  of  goodness,  at  any  rate,  we  readily  admit 
the  reality  of  that  moral  experience  of  which  fixity  of 
character  is  the  natural  interpretation.  We  have  no 
interest  in  proving  that  the  saint  is  potentially  a  sinner. 
The  condition  and  attribute  of  the  highest  life,  we  readily 
admit,  is  not  to  hold  oneself  aloof  from  good  and  evil,  and 
free  to  choose  between  them.  Far  rather  it  is  found  in 
the  '  single  mind,'  in  the  resolute  identification  of  the 
whole  man  or  self  with  the  good,  in  the  will  of  the  higher 
self  to  live.  For,  as  Aristotle  truly  said,  virtue  is  not 
virtue  until  it  has  become  a  habit  of  the  soul,  and  easy 
and  spontaneous  as  a  habit.  Moral  progress  is  a  progress 
from  nature  and  its  bondage,  through  freedom  and  duty, 
to  that  love  or  second  nature  which  alone  is  the  '  ful- 
filling of  the  law/  So  that,  "  after  all,  free-will  is  not  the 
highest  freedom."  Free-will  implies  antagonism  and  re- 
sistance. "  But  the  action  of  the  perfect,  so  far  as  they 
are  perfect,  is  natural.  .  .  .  Only  it  proceeds  from  a 
higher  nature,  in  which  experience  has  passed  through 
reason  into  insight,  in  which  impulse  and  desire  have 
passed  through  free-will  into  love."  1  This  is  freedom 
made  perfect,  the  liberty  of  the  children  of  God. 

Whether  the  identification  of  the  will  with  evil  can 
ever  become,  in  the  strict  sense,  fixed,  is  a  hard  and 
perhaps  unanswerable  question.  The  Faust  legend  seems 
to  express  such  a  belief,  and  for  Tito,  as  for  Esau,  there 
is  no  place  left  for  repentance.  In  the  impressive  little 

1  G.  A.  Simcox,  in  Mind,  O.S.,  vol.  iv.  p.  481. 


The  Psychological  Basis  57 

story  of  Marklieim  I  think  I  see  a  gleam  of  hope,  a 
suggestion  and  no  more,  of  the  final  possibility,  even 
for  the  most  debased,  of  moral  recovery.  Markheim's 
last  act  of  deliberate  self-surrender  seems  like  the  first 
step  away  from  the  evil  past  towards  a  better  future.  It 
was  the  last  possibility  of  good  for  the  man ;  but  even 
for  him  it  was  a  possibility  still.  And  does  it  not  seem 
as  if  an  evil  character,  however  evil,  being  the  formation 
of  will,  might  be  unformed  and  reformed  by  the  same 
power  ?  Is  not  character,  after  all,  but  a  garment  in 
which  the  spirit  clothes  itself — a  garment  which  clings 
tightly  to  it,  but  which  it  need  not  wear  eternally  ? 

The  tendency  is  towards  such  settlement  or  gradual 
fixation,  whether  in  goodness  or  in  evil.  But  absolute 
fixity  of  character  is  disproved  by  that  indubitable 
fact  of  moral  experience  which  Plato,  equally  with  the 
Christian  theologian,  calls  '  conversion ' — such  a  complete 
change  of  bent  as  amounts  not  merely  to  a  reformation  but 
to  a  revolution  of  character — "  the  turning  round  of  the 
eye  of  the  soul  and  with  it  the  whole  soul,  from  darkness 
to  light,  from  the  perishing  to  the  eternal"  It  seems 
as  if  the  past  and  the  present  life  were  never  an  ex- 
haustive expression  of  the  possibilities  of  wilL  The  man 
is  always  more  than  the  sum  of  his  past  and  present 
experience  ;  and  often  he  surprises  us  by  creating  a  future 
which,  while  it  stands  in  relation  to  the  past,  yet  does  so 
only,  or  chiefly,  by  antithesis.  It  is  as  if  the  catastrophe 
which  comes  with  the  culmination  of  his  evil  career,  by 
its  revelation  of  the  full  meaning  of  the  life  he  has  been 
living,  shocked  him  into  the  resolve  to  live  a  different  and 
a  better  life.  It  is  as  if  Markheim  said  to  himself,  after 
the  tragedy  of  that  fateful  day,  when  he  had  connected  it 
with  himself,  and  confessed  that  the  seeds  of  even  that 
evil  were  thickly  sown  in  the  soil  of  his  evil  past :  "  That 
is  not  the  man  I  choose  to  be ; "  and  as  if,  in  the  strength 
of  that  decision,  accepting  the  full  consequences  of  his 
deed,  and  surrendering  himself  deliberately  to  its  retribu- 


5  8  Introduction 

tion,  he  forthwith  took  the  first  step  away  from  his  past 
self  and  towards  a  future  self  entirely  different.  Might 
not  even  Tito,  even  Faust,  even  Esau,  so  choose  at  last 
the  better  part  ?  Christianity  calls  it  a  '  new  birth,'  so 
different  is  the  new  man  from  the  old.  Yet,  however 
different,  it  is  the  same  man  through  the  two  lives ;  the 
same  will,  only  it  has  changed  its  course ;  the  same 
player,  but  in  a  new  rdle. 

We  must  recognise,  therefore,  a  very  considerable  range 
of  variation  in  the  adequacy  of  activity  as  the  exponent 
of  character.  In  some  actions  we  see  the  stirring  of  the 
deeps  of  personality,  the  revelation  of  the  very  self ;  in 
others  only  the  waves  on  the  surface  of  the  moral  life. 
There  is  a  great  difference  in  this  respect  even  between 
individuals.  Some  men  are  reserved,  and  their  character 
is  a  closed  book  to  their  fellow-men.  Others  are  open, 
and  readily  reveal  their  inner  being.  In  some  there  is 
less  depth  of  soil  than  in  others — superficial  natures,  who 
have  not  much  either  to  hide  or  to  reveal,  the  volume 
of  whose  character  is  quickly  read  and  mastered  by  their 
fellows.  In  some,  perhaps  in  all,  there  is  a  double  life, 
an  outer  and  an  inner,  never  quite  harmonised,  and  often 
directly  opposed.  This  '  double-faced  unity  '  in  the  moral 
world,  this  co-existence  and  antagonism  of  '  two  men '  in 
one,  of  a  Dr  Jekyll  and  Mr  Hyde,  is  not  necessarily 
duplicity  or  hypocrisy.  Eather  it  seems  to  mean  that 
there  is  always  a  residuum  of  moral  possibility,  whatever 
the  actual  character  may  have  become :  the  man  never  is 
either  Dr  Jekyll  or  Mr  Hyde,  the  saint  or  the  sinner ;  but 
he  is  potentially  either,  though  actually  partly  the  one  and 
partly  the  other,  more  the  one  and  less  the  other.  And 
out  of  the  furthest  retreats  of  the  unconscious  or  sub- 
conscious sphere  there  may  emerge  any  day  the  buried, 
forgotten,  yet  truest  and  most  real  self.  The  man  may 
have  wandered  into  the  far  country,  and  may  even  seem 
to  have  lost  all  trace  of  goodness,  and  yet  he  may  in  the 
end  '  come  to  himself,'  and  may  recover  those  possibilities 


The  Psychological  Basis  59 

which  had  till  then  seemed  possibilities  no  longer.  '  So 
long  as  there  is  life  there  is  hope.'  Character  may  seem 
to  have  entirely  lost  its  plasticity,  and  to  have  become 
quite  fixed  and  rigid.  But  it  is  not  so.  Character  is  a 
living  thing,  and  life  is  never  fixed  or  rigid.  After  all, 
the  ordinary  average  character  is  more  apt  to  suggest  the 
true  state  of  the  case  than  either  of  the  extremes.  These 
extremes  are  instability  or  absence  of  character  on  the  one 
hand,  and  what  we  have  called  fixity  or  finality  of  char- 
acter on  the  other.  The  latter  would  be  fossilisation,  or 
the  cessation  of  growth,  which  is  death.  Character  is 
essentially,  from  first  to  last,  plastic.  It  implies  open- 
mindedness,  freshness  or  ingenuousness,  receptivity  for 
the  new.  The  change  is  not,  indeed,  capricious  or  at 
random :  the  new  must  be  linked  to  the  old ;  the  old 
must  itself  be  renewed,  recreated  in  every  part.  Yet  the 
relation  of  the  new  to  the  old  may  be  that  of  antithesis 
and  revolt,  as  well  as  of  synthesis  and  continuity.  The 
development  of  character  is  not  always  in  a  straight  line ; 
it  is  ever  returning  upon  and  reconstituting  itself. 

7.  Intellectual  elements  in  volition.  —  It  is  neces- 
sary, before  leaving  the  psychology  of  the  moral  life,  to 
consider  the  relation  of  intellect  and  feeling  to  will, 
(a)  The  first  intellectual  element  in  volition  is  concep- 
tion. The  natural  or  animal  life  is  unthinking,  the 
voluntary  or  moral  life  is  a  thoughtful  life.  The  Greeks 
understood  this  well ;  we  find  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aris- 
totle all  alike  identifying  virtue  with  knowledge  or 
rational  insight.  It  is  not,  however,  true  that  the  moral 
and  the  intellectual  life  are  one,  or  that  '  virtue  is  know- 
ledge.' It  is  the  volition  behind  the  intellection  that  is 
the  essential  element.  We  might  say  that  virtue  is 
attention,  or  the  steady  entertaining  of  a  certain  con- 
ception of  life  or  of  its  several  activities.  This  is  what 
distinguishes  the  voluntary  form  of  activity  from  both 
the  instinctive  and  the  impulsive  forms.  Instinct  exe- 


60  Introduction 

cutes  certain  ends  unconsciously ;  it  is  the  unconscious 
organisation  of  impulse,  nature's  own  control  of  natural 
tendency.  Mere  impulse,  on  the  other  hand,  is  momen- 
tary, and  takes  in  but  a  single  object ;  the  creature  of 
impulse  is  touched  at  only  one  point  of  his  nature,  and 
follows  the  tendency  of  the  moment.  Since,  therefore, 
man  has  the  organisation  of  his  impulsive  tendencies  in 
his  own  hands,  his  first  and  essential  act  must  be  one  of 
thought  or  conception.  To  think  or  conceive  the  pro- 
posed action  aright,  is  the  condition  of  right  action ;  and 
it  is  because  the  vicious  man  thinks  or  conceives  his 
action  wrongly,  and  under  false  colours,  that  he  does  it. 
"  To  sustain  a  representation,  to  think,"  says  Professor 
James,  "  is,  in  short,  the  only  moral  act."  It  is  because 
the  drunkard  '  lets  himself  go,'  and  will  not  conceive  or 
name  his  act  aright,  because  he  will  not  acknowledge  to 
himself  that  'this  is  being  a  drunkard,'  that  he  is  a 
drunkard.  So  soon  as  he  brings  himself  to  this,  he  is 
on  the  way  to  being  saved ;  if  he  keeps  his  mind  on  this 
idea,  it  will  gradually  be  strengthened,  until  it  is  pre- 
dominant, and  issues  in  the  inhibition  of  the  tendency  to 
drink.  For  thus  to  conceive  an  act  is  to  apperceive  it, 
to  see  it  in  all  its  relations  to  the  total  self ;  and  then 
how  differently  it  looks,  how  its  fascination  pales  in  that 
larger  light.  The  true  centre  of  influence  has  now  been 
found,  in  the  deeper  rational  self  which  assimilates  and 
rejects  according  to  its  discrimination. 

Undue  reflectiveness  means,  of  course,  weakness  of 
will  or  indecision  of  character ;  it  is  fatal  to  that  promp- 
titude which  is  essential  to  effective  activity.  Plato  has 
drawn  a  delightful  picture  of  the  dire  practical  effects  of 
undue  deliberation,  in  his  contrast  of  the  awkward,  in- 
effective philosopher  and  the  shrewd,  quick,  business-like, 
little  lawyer-soul.1  In  his  parable  of  the  Cave,  also,  he 
has  given  expression  to  the  popular  idea  of  the  man  of 
thought  as  little  fitted  to  be,  at  the  same  time,  a  man  of 

1  Tkecetctus,  172-176. 


The  Psychological  Basis  61 

action ;  he  represents  the  philosopher  or  true  thinker  as 
withdrawn  from  human  affairs,  and,  by  his  want  of  in- 
terest in  the  concerns  of  ordinary  life,  in  a  sense  unfitted 
for  the  conduct  of  life's  business.  Shakespeare,  too,  has 
created  for  us  a  Hamlet,  a  thinker  but  a  dreamer,  dis- 
abled by  undue  reflection  for  the  part  he  is  called  to  play 
on  this  world's  stage,  his  will  so  embarrassed  by  the  'pros' 
and  '  cons '  of  a  restless  intellect  that  it  can  accomplish 
nothing,  a  man  in  whom  "  the  native  hue  of  resolution  is 
sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought."  And  our 
own  century  has  furnished  a  sad  living  commentary 
on  the  familiar  text.  Amiel's  Journal  is  the  record  of 
how  the  springs  of  all  practical  energy  were  sapped  by  a 
continual,  brooding,  Hamlet-like  reflection  which  never 
found  vent  in  action :  it  is  one  long  bitter  plaint  of  a 
soul  praying  for  deliverance  from  the  misery  of  such  a 
living  death,  the  story  of  a  life  endowed  with  such  clear- 
ness of  intellectual  vision,  united  to  such  sad  impotence 
of  will,  that  it  could  trace  its  own  failure  to  this  single 
source.  So  true  is  it  that  we  all  have  '  the  defects  of 
our  qualities,'  and  that  these  defects  must  be  our  ruin 
if  we  guard  not  against  them.  Yet  life  is  not  all 
tragedy;  and  such  dire  consequences  are  not  inevitable, 
or  even  normal.  Even  in  these  cases,  it  is  not  that  the 
man  thinks  too  much,  but  that  his  activity  is  not  up  to 
the  measure  of  his  thought;  unless  thought  finds  its 
constant  and  adequate  expression  in  action,  it  weakens 
where  it  ought  to  strengthen  the  power  to  act.  The 
result  is  what  Professor  James  calls '  the  obstructed  will/ 
the  will  hindered  by  thought,  which  is  just  at  the  oppo- 
site extreme  from  the  '  explosive '  or  impulsive  will — the 
will  that  does  not  think,  but  reacts  with  '  hair-trigger ' 
rapidity  and  certainty.  The  true  function  of  thought  is 
to  mediate  between  these  extremes  of  character;  not  to 
sap  the  force  of  impulse,  but  to  guide  that  force  to  more 
effective  issues.  The  grey  light  of  reason  need  not 
quench  all  the  bright  sunshine  of  enthusiasm ;  the  ruddy 


62  Introduction 

life  of  natural  impulse  need  not  be  sicklied  o'er  with  the 
pale  cast  of  thought.  Kather  it  is  the  function  of  reason 
to  convert  unthinking  impulses  into  great  enthusiasms,  to 
inform  the  practical  energies  with  far-reaching  purposes, 
and  thus  to  be  the  will's  best  helpmate  in  its  proper  task. 
The  most  effective  man  is  he  who,  knowing  best  and 
thinking  most  profoundly  about  life's  meaning,  feels  also 
most  intensely,  and  acts  most  promptly  and  consistently 
in  accordance  with  his  thought  and  feeling. 

(&)  It  is  obvious  that  memory  of  the  past  is  necessary 
for  the  representation  of  future  possibilities.  We  can 
conceive  the  future  only  in  terms  of  the  past :  experience 
is  our  sole  instructor  in  the  conduct  of  life.  And  only 
a  vivid  and  accurate  memory  of  the  past,  the  power  to 
reproduce  it  as  it  was,  can  deliver  us  from  the  bondage 
of  the  engrossing  present.  The  ability  to  look  forward 
is  largely  an  ability  to  look  backward.  Experience 
is  our  common  teacher  here,  but  we  are  not  all  apt 
pupils.  Some  gain  from  experience  far  more  than  others, 
— in  retentive  memory  they  garner  its  golden  grain,  and 
draw  from  it  in  all  the  exigencies  of  the  present;  the 
years  bring  to  them  their  own  peculiar  gift — the  wisdom 
of  life.  To  others  the  years  do  not  bring  the  philosophic 
mind;  they  seem  to  pass  through  the  same  experience 
untouched  by  its  lessons.  Their  life  is  in  the  fleeting 
present;  they  are  like  children  who  amuse  themselves 
with  life's  changing  show.  They  are  the  creatures  of 
present  impulse,  passive  and  receptive,  taking  no  thought 
for  the  morrow,  because  they  take  no  heed  of  yesterday; 
for  "  purpose  is  but  the  slave  to  memory." x  Such  lives 
are  without  perspective,  without  appreciation  of  the  far 
and  near;  they  have  no  future,  because  they  have  no 
past.  The  wise  man's  life  is  richly  '  fringed  '  on  either 
side,  and  the  fringe  of  the  future  is  of  the  same  pattern 
as  that  of  the  past.  Memory  is  the  true  '  measuring  art.' 

1  Hamlet,  Act  iii.  sc.  2,  quoted  by  Hb'ffding,  Psychology,  p.  327  (Eng.  tr.) 
Cf.  his  account  of  this  entire  subject. 


TJie  Psychological  Basis  63 

A  truthful  representation  of  the  future  depends  upon  a 
truthful  representation  of  the  past,  and  will  go  far  to 
determine  the  present. 

(c)  The  power  to  look  vividly  forward  is  no  less  neces- 
sary than  the  power  to  look  vividly  backward.  It  is  a 
defect  of  imagination  that  is  largely  to  blame  for  the 
unworthy  and  sensual  lives  we  see.  It  is  because  the 
horizon  is  bounded  by  the  day's  needs  and  the  day's 
capacities  of  enjoyment,  that  the  life  is  so  narrow  and 
so  mean.  Could  but  the  horizon  lift,  could  but  the  man 
look  into  the  far-distant  future,  and  discern  there  all  the 
consequences  of  the  act  he  is  about  to  do,  could  he  but 
see  its  waves  breaking  on  those  distant  shores  against 
which  some  day  they  must  break,  how  different  his  life 
would  be.  And  if  we  would  lift  the  horizon  of  time 
itself,  and  see  our  life  in  time  siib  quddam  specie  ceternitatis, 
we  must  stretch  our  imagination  to  the  utmost.  Seen 
in  that  light,  in  the  light  of  '  the  immensities  and  eter- 
nities/ nothing  is  common  or  unclean,  nothing  is  trivial 
or  commonplace ;  the  simplest  and  meanest  acts  become 
transfigured  with  a  strange  dignity  and  significance. 
Surely,  then,  the  moral  imagination,  which  discovers  to 
us  the  true  perspective  of  life,  is  no  less  important  for 
practice  than  is  the  scientific  imagination  for  theory. 

8.  Will  and  feeling.  Is  pleasure  the  object  of 
choice  ? — Two  opposed  views  have  long  been  maintained, 
and  the  controversy  still  rages,  as  to  the  place  of  feeling 
in  the  moral  life.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  maintained 
that  pleasure  is  the  constant  and  exclusive  object  of 
choice ;  on  the  other  hand,  that  pleasure  is  never  the 
object  of  choice.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  said  that  our 
life  is  one  continuous  pursuit  of  pleasure ;  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  is  impossible  and 
suicidal.  The  one  view  sees  in  pleasure  the  sole  actual 
end  of  life ;  the  other  sees  in  it  the  concomitant  and 
result,  but  not  the  end  or  object  of  pursuit.  The  former 


64  Introduction 

view  was  held  in  ancient  times  by  the  Cyrenaics,  and  in 
modern  by  Hume  and  J.  S.  Mill,  among  others.  The 
latter  is  the  view  of  Aristotle  among  the  ancients,  of 
Butler,  Sidgwick,  and  Green  among  modern  moralists, 
and  of  James,  Baldwin,  and  Hoffding  among  contem- 
porary psychologists.  Both  theories  admit  that  feeling 
is  an  element  in  human  life ;  the  problem  is  to  deter- 
mine its  psychological  place  and  function. 

A  glance  at  the  rdle  of  feeling  in  the  lower  and  non- 
voluntary  activities  of  instinct  and  impulse  may  help  us 
to  understand  the  part  it  plays  in  the  higher  life  of  will. 
We  have  seen  that  neither  in  the  case  of  impulse,  nor  in 
that  of  instinct,  is  there  consciousness  of  an  end.  Both 
are  blind,  unenlightened  tendencies  to  act  in  a  certain 
way.  In  impulsive  activities  there  is  no  operation  of  an 
end  at  all ;  in  those  which  we  call  instinctive  its  opera- 
tion is  unconscious.  But  both  these  types  of  activity 
are  accompanied  by  feeling.  There  is  not  merely  the 
tendency  to  act ;  the  consciousness  has  a  passive  as  well 
as  an  active  side,  a  certain  '  tone ' — it  is  pleasant  or 
painful.  Nor  is  this  primarily  passive  side  merely  pas- 
sive, merely  concomitant ;  it  is  also  influential  in  deter- 
mining the  activity  of  the  sentient  being.  It  is  the 
single  ray  of  light  let  into  the  darkness  of  the  animal 
life  of  instinct  and  impulse.  There  is  no  further  vision 
of  the  whither ;  there  is  no  consciousness  of  purpose,  no 
choice  of  ends.  But  there  is  a  feeling  for  pleasure  and 
pain,  of  want  and  the  satisfaction  of  it ;  and  this  feeling 
guides  the  being  towards  the  objects  that  will  satisfy  it, 
that  will  quench  its  pain  and  yield  it  pleasure.  This 
feeling  for  pleasure  and  pain  has  helped  materially  to 
guide  the  evolution  of  animal  life.  Pleasure-giving  and 
life-preserving  activities  are,  in  the  main,  identical ;  and 
the  importance  of  the  addition  of  the  internal  to  the 
external  pressure,  of  the  conscious  pressure  of  feeling  to 
the  unconscious  pressure  of  environment  and  circum- 
stances, can  hardly  be  overestimated. 


The  Psychological  Basis  65 

That  which  distinguishes  voluntary  from  involuntary 
activity  is,  we  have  seen,  the  conscious  operation  of  ends 
as  motives  of  choice.  The  guidance  has  now  passed  into 
the  hands  of  intellect;  we  act  in  the  light  of  rational 
insight  into  the  issues  of  our  activity,  we  have  a  reason 
for  what  we  do.  To  the  lower  guidance  of  immediate 
near-sighted  feeling  there  is  now  added  the  higher  and 
farther-seeing  guidance  of  ideas.  But,  even  here,  the 
guidance  has  not  entirely  passed  from  the  hands  of  feel- 
ing. For,  not  only  are  there,  interfused  with  ends,  what 
Professor  Baldwin  calls  '  affects,'  or  activities  immedi- 
ately determined  by  feeling ;  but  ends  themselves  have 
an  '  affective '  side,  or  contain  an  element  of  feeling 
without  which  they  would  possess  no  motive  -  force. 
"  The  simple  presence  of  an  idea  in  consciousness  is 
itself  a  feeling,  and  only  in  as  far  as  it  affects  us  does 
it  move  us."  ]  Feeling  thus  mediates  between  intellect 
and  will,  converting  the  cold  intellectual  conception  into 
a  constraining  motive  of  activity.  In  ends,  then,  there 
is  always  an  element  of  feeling  as  well  as  of  thought ; 
it  is  the  fusion  of  these  two  that  constitutes  the  interests 
of  the  voluntary  life.  We  are  now  delivered  from  the 
immediate  dominion  of  feeling;  we  see  or  foresee  what 
course  will  yield  us  pleasure,  and  we  act  under  the 
guidance  of  this  intellectual  sight  or  foresight.  But  are 
we  not  still,  indirectly  if  not  directly,  controlled  by  feel- 
ing ?  The  Hedonist  answers  in  the  affirmative :  he 
insists  that  the  ultimate  factor  in  the  determination  of 
our  choice  is  feeling  rather  than  thought ;  that  thought  is 
after  all  the  minister  of  feeling,  informing  it  how  a  de- 
sirable state  of  feeling  may  be  attained  and  an  undesir- 
able state  of  feeling  escaped.  The  dominion  of  feeling 
still  persists,  only  it  is  an  indirect  dominion  ;  feeling  has 
not  abdicated,  it  has  only  delegated  its  authority  to  in- 
tellect, and  become  a  constitutional  sovereign.  The  anti- 
hedonistic  answer  is  that  pleasure,  or  an  agreeable  state 

1  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  pp.  313,  314. 
E 


66  Introduction 

of  feeling,  is  never  the  end  or  object  of  desire  and  choice  ; 
that  while  pleasure  accompanies  both  the  pursuit  and  the 
attainment  of  our  ends,  it  never  constitutes  these  ends. 
We  never  act,  it  is  contended,  for  the  sake  of  pleasure, 
but  for  the  sake  of  objects,  or  interests,  in  which  we 
'  rest,'  and  from  which  we  do  not  return  to  a  considera- 
tion of  our  own  subjective  feeling  of  pleasure,  either  in 
their  pursuit  or  in  their  attainment.  Let  us  follow  the 
argument  on  both  sides,  if  we  can,  to  the  end. 

The  primary  direction  of  thought,  the  anti-hedonist 
maintains,  is  towards  the  object,  not  towards  the  pleasure 
which  it  is  expected  to  yield.  We  do  not,  it  is  argued, 
look  so  far  ahead  as  the  pleasure :  that  is  not  what  moves 
us.  To  say  that  the  anticipated  pleasure  is  the  motive 
of  activity  is  to  commit  the  '  psychologist's  fallacy ' ;  to 
read  your  own  introspective  and  analytic  consciousness 
of  the  conditions  of  consciousness  into  that  original  and 
natural  consciousness  which  is  the  object  of  your  intro- 
spective investigation,  but  is  not  itself  troubled  with 
introspection  or  analysis.  Even  the  voluntary  life  is,  to 
this  extent,  blind;  even  it  is  not  endowed  with  the 
minute  vision  of  the  psychologist,  still  less  with  the 
microscopic  eye  of  the  logician.  The  question  is  :  What 
do  we  desire  ?  not,  What  are  the  conditions  of  desire  ? 
or,  Why  do  we  desire  what  we  desire  ?  It  is  a  question 
of  fact,  not  of  the  conditions  or  the  rationale  of  the  fact. 
Now,  "  a  pleasant  act,  and  an  act  pursuing  pleasure,  are, 
in  themselves,  two  perfectly  distinct  conceptions.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  confusion  of  pursued  pleasure  with  mere  pleasure 
of  achievement,  which  makes  the  pleasure-theory  so  plau- 
sible to  the  ordinary  mind."  J  In  short,  the  '  pleasure  of 
pursuit '  is  psychologically  different  from  the  '  pursuit  of 
pleasure.' 

Even  the  Hedonists  themselves  seem  to  yield  this 
point,  and  to  admit  the  'paradox  of  Hedonism' — namely, 
that  "  to  get  pleasure  you  must  forget  it."  Mill  makes 

1  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  pp.  556,  557. 


The  Psychological  Basis  67 

this  confession,  both  in  his  Utilitarianism  and  in  his 
Autobiography.  He  admits  that  the  direct  pursuit  of 
pleasure  is  suicidal,  that  we  must  lose  sight  of  the  end 
in  the  means,  and,  adopting  a  kind  of  '  miser's  conscious- 
ness,' affect  a  disinterested  or  objective  interest,  forget 
ourselves,  and  pursue  objects  as  if  for  their  own  sake, 
and  not  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure  which  we  expect 
them  to  yield.  '  Something  accomplished,  something 
done,'  yields  pleasure ;  but  if  it  is  to  yield  the  pleasure, 
at  least  the  maximum  of  pleasure,  we  must  not  do  it  for 
the  sake  of  the  pleasure.  The  life  of  pleasure-seeking 
is,  in  other  words,  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  a  life 
of  illusion  and  make-believe. 

But,  replies  the  anti-hedonist,  such  an  interpretation 
of  human  life  is  in  the  highest  degree  artificial  and  un- 
psychological.  "  The  real  order  of  things  is  just  the 
reverse  of  the  hedonistic  interpretation  of  it.  Instead 
of  beginning  with  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and  ending 
by  pursuing  what  was  earlier  the  means  to  pleasure,  we 
begin  by  pursuing  an  object,  and  end  by  degrading  this 
primary  object  to  an  artificial  means  to  pleasure,  or  as  a 
competitor  with  pleasure  for  the  dignity  of  being  pur- 
sued." 1  The  passage  is  "  from  simple  desire  for  an 
object  which  satisfies  to  desire  for  the  satisfaction  itself." 
Here,  once  more,  the  Hedonist  seems  forced  to  concede 
the  point  to  his  antagonist.  Even  such  an  extreme 
Hedonist  as  Hume  admits  that  "it  has  been  proved 
beyond  all  controversy  that  even  the  passions  commonly 
esteemed  selfish  may  carry  the  mind  beyond  self  directly 
to  the  object;  that  though  the  satisfaction  gives  us 
enjoyment,  yet  the  prospect  of  this  enjoyment  is  not 
the  cause  of  the  passion,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  passion 
is  antecedent  to  the  enjoyment,  and  without  the  former 
the  latter  could  never  possibly  exist."2 

The  case  now  seems  to  be  decided  against  the  Hedonist. 

1  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  p.  327. 

2  Essay  on  Different  Species  of  Philosophy,  §  1,  note. 


68  Introduction 

The  latter's  interpretation  of  life  seems  to  have  been 
proved  unnatural  and  forced.  The  voluptuary  may,  on 
reflection,  adopt  his  scheme  of  life  as  the  only  logically 
defensible  scheme ;  but  his  practice  will  always  contradict 
the  logic  of  his  scheme.  The  '  hedonistic  calculus  '  must 
be  abandoned,  and  another  measure  found  for  practical 
use.  But  the  Hedonist  is  not  yet  silenced.  There  is  a 
previous  question,  he  still  insists,  which  his  opponent  has 
not  answered — namely,  What  is  the  object  of  desire, 
if  it  is  not  pleasure  ?  Are  we  not  brought  back  to 
Hedonism  whenever  we  investigate  the  constitution  of 
the  object  ?  Does  not  that  pleasure,  which  we  had  just 
put  out  at  the  door,  come  back  through  the  window  ? 
For  what  is  the  object  apart  from  you?  It  exists  through 
its  relation  to  you — nay,  it  is  yourself.  What  you  desire 
is  not  a  mere  object,  but  an  object  as  satisfying  yourself, 
and  what  moves  you  to  act  is  the  idea  of  yourself  as 
satisfied  in  the  attainment  of  the  object.  Not  the  object, 
but  the  attainment  of  the  object  by  you — or,  more  strictly 
still,  your  self-satisfaction  in  its  attainment,  is  the  end 
that  moves  you  to  strive  after  it.  And  in  what  can 
the  satisfaction  of  the  self  consist  but  in  a  feeling  of 
pleasure  I 

Moreover,  the  '  paradox  of  Hedonism  '  turns  out  to  be 
more  seeming  than  real.  The  distinction  between  the 
end  and  the  means  towards  its  attainment  is  not  a  real 
but  an  artificial  distinction.  The  end  and  the  means  are 
really  the  same,  you  can  analyse  the  one  into  the  other ; 
the  end  is  the  whole,  of  which  the  means  are  the  parts 
or  elements,  and  you  can  no  more  lose  the  end  in  the 
means  than  the  whole  in  the  parts.  The  means  to 
pleasure  are  just  the  details  of  the  pleasant  life,  and  in 
pursuing  them  you  are  in  truth  pursuing,  in  the  only 
rational  manner,  step  by  step,  or  bit  by  bit,  that  totality 
of  satisfaction  which  can  be  constituted  in  no  other  way^ 
The  life  of  pleasure  is  not  an  abstract  universal ;  it  is  a 
concrete  whole,  and  consists  of  real  particulars.  Pleasure, 


The  Psychological  Basis  69 

further,  is  derived  from  pleasant  things;  to  divorce  it 
from  these  is  to  destroy  it.  But  such  a  divorce  is 
entirely  gratuitous ;  no  matter  how  it  is  reached,  the 
pleasure  itself  is  our  real  end.  We  have  not '  forgotten  ' 
the  pleasure  after  all  In  the  words  of  J.  S.  Mill :  "  In 
these  cases  the  means  have  become  a  part  of  the  end, 
and  a  more  important  part  of  it  than  any  of  the  things 
which  they  are  means  to.  What  was  once  desired  as  an 
instrument  for  the  attainment  of  happiness,  has  come  .to 
be  desired  for  its  own  sake.  In  being  desired  for  its 
own  sake  it  is,  however,  desired  as  part  of  happiness. 
The  person  is  made,  or  thinks  he  would  be  made,  happy 
by  its  mere  possession  ;  and  is  made  unhappy  by  failure 
to  obtain  it.  The  desire  of  it  is  not  a  different  thing 
from  the  desire  of  happiness,  any  more  than  the  love  of 
music,  or  the  desire  of  health.  They  are  included  in 
happiness ;  they  are  some  of  the  elements  of  which  the 
desire  of  happiness  is  made  up.  Happiness  is  not  an 
abstract  idea,  but  a  concrete  whole ;  and  these  are  some 
of  its  parts.  .  .  .  Life  would  be  a  poor  thing,  very  ill 
provided  with  sources  of  happiness,  if  there  were  not  this 
provision  of  nature,  by  which  things  originally  indifferent, 
but  conducive  to,  or  otherwise  associated  with,  the  satis- 
faction of  our  primitive  desires,  become  in  themselves 
sources  of  pleasure  more  valuable  than  the  primitive 
pleasures,  both  in  permanency,  in  the  space  of  human 
existence  that  they  are  capable  of  covering,  and  even  in 
intensity."  1 

The  question  finally  resolves  itself,  therefore,  into  the 
following  form :  Choice  being  the  realisation  of  an  idea, 
is  the  idea  which  we  choose  to  realise,  or  the  moving 
idea,  in  all  cases  the  idea  of  pleasure,  i.e.,  the  anticipation 
of  the  pleased  feeling  which  will  result  from  the  pro- 
posed course  of  action  ?  Is  this  the  only  possible  content 
of  the  idea  selected  for  realisation  ?  Is  this,  in  the  last 
analysis,  the  only  possible  object  of  thought,  and,  there- 

1  Utilitarianism,  ch.  fo 


70  Introduction 

fore,  of  choice  ?  The  obvious  answer  is  that,  so  far  from 
this  being  the  case,  the  ideal  object  may  be  anything, 
objective  or  subjective.  The  mind  may,  in  Butler's 
phrase,  '  rest  in  the  external  things  themselves,'  and  not 
return  to  the  consideration  of  its  own  pleasure  in  their 
attainment.  And,  even  if  the  content  of  the  idea  be 
subjective,  that  content  need  not  be  merely  the  repre- 
sented state  of  feeling.  I  may  choose  to  do  something, 
or  to  be  something,  as  well  as  to  feel  somehow.  As  Mr 
Bradley  says,  "  there  never  was  any  one  who  did  not 
desire  many  things  for  their  own  sake ;  there  never  was 
a  typical  voluptuary."  x 

Whence,  then,  the  illusion  of  '  psychological '  Hedon- 
ism ?  It  arises,  I  am  convinced,  from  a  confusion  between 
the  content  or  constitution  of  the  moving  idea,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  emotional  strength  by  virtue  of  which  the 
idea  moves  me  to  its  own  realisation,  on  the  other  hand ; 
from  the  confusion  between  a  pleasant  idea  and  an  idea 
of  pleasure.2  The  idea  must  please  or  attract  me  ;  else  it 
will  remain  unrealised.  To  move  me,  it  must  please  me. 
Pleasure  is  the  mechanism  or  dynamic  of  choice.  The 
energy  or  moving  power  of  an  idea  lies  in  the  feeling 
which  it  arouses.  The  law  of  its  operation  is  the  law  of 
attraction  or  fascination :  it  moves,  '  as  one  that  is  loved 
moves,'  by  drawing  us  to  itself.  There  is  pleasure  in 
every  act  of  choice.  Without  this  pleasure,  the  choice 
would  be  impossible;  and  the  pleasure  must,  therefore, 
be  accepted  as  part  of  the  explanation  of  the  choice.  It 
is  what  Aristotle  calls  the  '  efficient  cause,'  the  moving 
power  or  agency.  It  is  more  than  the  concomitant  of 

1  Ethical  Studies,  p.  237. 

2  Cf.  Bradley  (op.  cit.,  p.  235) :  "  A  pleasant  thought "  ia  "  not  the  same 
thing  with  the  thought  of  pleasure";  and  C.  M.  Williams  (A  Review  of 
Evolutional  Ethics,  p.  399) :  "  In  the  imagination  of  action  and  its  results, 
or  the  thought  of  it,  reflection  may  linger  especially  on  any  one  of  ita 
elements, — on  any  part  of  the  action  and  its  results  as  inferred  from  the 
analogy  of  past  experience.     The  pleasure  to  self  is  not  necessarily  the 
element  on  which  the  mind  lays  stress." 


The  Psychological  Basis  71 

the  act  of  choice,  which  Aristotle  acknowledged  it  to  be ; 
it  is  the  dynamic  of  choice.  Even  when  the  choice  is  a 
choice  of  pain  (in  preference  to  pleasure)  or  of  something 
quite  different  from  either  pleasure  or  pain  (as  in  the 
choice  of  the  scholar  or  of  the  man  of  science),  the  choice 
itself  is  pleasant,  or  it  would  be  impossible.  The  idea 
thrills  us,  fascinates  us,  claims  us  as  its  own  ;  and  it  is  in 
this  appeal  to  our  feeling  that  its  power  to  move  us  lies. 
Otherwise,  the  idea  (whatever  it  is  an  idea  of)  were  im- 
potent ;  so,  it  is  omnipotent.  And,  to  leave  no  doubt  as 
to  the  importance  of  the  function  of  pleasure  in  the 
process  of  choice,  let  us  add  that  the  law  of  that  process 
is  that  the  idea  which  is  most  attractive,  or  gives  most 
pleasure,  is  always  the  victorious  and  moving  idea.  In 
this  sense  Mill's  words  are  true,  that  "  desiring  a  thing 
and  finding  it  pleasant  .  .  .  are  ...  in  strictness  of 
language,  two  different  modes  of  naming  the  same  psy- 
chological fact."  1  Mr  Sidgwick's  statement  is  also  true, 
that  "  if  by  '  pleasant '  we  mean  that  which  influences 
choice,  exercises  a  certain  attractive  force  on  the  will,  it 
is  an  assertion  incontrovertible  because  tautological,  to 
say  that  we  desire  what  is  pleasant,  or  even  that  we  de- 
sire a  thing  in  proportion  as  it  appears  pleasant."  ' 

But  there  is  another,  and  no  less  essential,  element  in 
the  process  of  choice ;  and  therefore  another,  and  no  less 
essential,  factor  in  its  explanation.  In  Mr  Bradley's 
words,  "to  choose  what  pleases  me  most  .  .  .  merely 
means  that  I  choose,  and  says  nothing  whatever  about 
what  I  choose."  3  Pleasure  is  that  which  enables  me 
to  choose;  but  it  is  not  therefore  also  that  which  I 
choose — the  content  or  object  of  my  choice.  A  pleasant 
choice  is  not  necessarily  a  choice  of  pleasure.  The  idea 
which  moves  me  to  its  realisation  does  so  because  its 
content  (that  which  it  is  an  idea  of)  appeals  to  me  more 
strongly,  attracts,  interests,  or  pleases  me  more  than  the 

1  Utilitarianism,  ch.  iv.  2  Methods  of  Ethics,  book  i.  ch.  iv.  §  2. 

3  Ethical  Studies,  p.  234. 


72  Introduction 

content  of  the  other  competing  ideas.  The  attractive 
power  of  the  idea  is  the  explanation  of  its  realisation  in 
the  act  of  choice.  But  the  secret  of  this  attractive  power 
is  found  in  the  correspondence  between  the  content  of  the 
idea  and  myself.  That  content  raises  or  degrades  me  to 
itself,  makes  me  its  own ;  it,  therefore,  is  the  object  of  my 
choice — is  what  I  choose.  It  is  what  Aristotle  would  call 
the  'final  cause,'  that  for  the  sake  of  which  I  act,  the  end 
which  I  choose  as  my  good.  We  cannot  too  carefully 
distinguish  this  teleological  explanation  of  choice  from 
the  mechanical  or  dynamical  explanation  already  referred 
to, — the  ratio  from  the  causa,  the  i£  ou  from  the  ou  tVfica. 
It  does  not  follow  that,  because  an  action  is  pleasant,  it  is 
performed  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure ;  that  because  the 
martyr's,  and  many  another's,  self-sacrificing  devotion 
thrills  him,  and  the  thrill  of  strange  delight  carries  him 
through  an  act  which  had  otherwise  been  impossible,  the 
act  is  therefore  done  for  the  sake  of  the  thrill,  or  that  this 
is  the  object  of  his  devotion.  That  would  be  an  explana- 
tion which  does  not  explain,  a  distortion  and  negation  of 
the  essential  fact  in  the  case.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the 
very  perfection  of  his  devotion  to  the  object  that  accounts 
for  the  thrill :  the  thrill  is  the  thrill  of  devotion,  and  is 
not  felt  save  by  the  devotee. 

This  distinction  between  the  dynamical  and  the  teleo- 
logical aspects  of  choice  was  well  expressed  by  the  older 
British  writers  in  the  two  terms  '  motive  '  and  '  intention  ' 
(or  '  end ').  The  former  term  was  used  to  designate  the 
sentient  '  spring '  or  source  of  the  action,  the  latter  to 
designate  its  aim,  object,  or  end.  This  is  the  usage  of 
Bentham,  who  defines  a  "  motive  to  the  will "  as  "  any- 
thing whatsoever,  which,  by  influencing  the  will  of  a 
sensitive  being,  is  supposed  to  serve  as  a  means  of  deter- 
mining him  to  act,  or  voluntarily  to  forbear  to  act,  upon 
any  occasion."  *  "A  motive,"  he  adds,  "  is  substantially 
nothing  more  than  pleasure  or  pain  operating  in  a  certain 

1  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  x.  §  3, 


The  Psychological  Basis  73 

manner."  *  It  is  also  the  usage  of  J.  S.  Mill,  who  defines 
the  intention  as  "  what  the  agent  wills  to  do,"  and  the 
motive  as  "  the  feeling  which  makes  him  so  will  to  do."  5 
In  view  of  this  distinction,  these  writers  hold,  quite 
consistently,  that  ethical  quality  belongs  primarily  and 
strictly  to  the  intention  alone,  and  only  secondarily  and 
indirectly  to  the  motive.  Bentham  says  explicitly  that 
all  motives  are  morally  colourless,  since  they  are  all  the 
same  in  kind, — all  pleasure-seeking  and  pain-shunning. 
"  There  is  no  such  thing  as  any  sort  of  motive  that  is  in 
itself  a  bad  one.  Let  a  man's  motive  be  ill-will ;  call  it 
even  malice,  envy,  cruelty ;  it  is  still  a  kind  of  pleasure 
that  is  his  motive :  the  pleasure  he  takes  at  the  thought 
of  the  pain  which  he  sees,  or  expects  to  see,  his  adversary 
undergo.  Now  even  this  wretched  pleasure,  taken  by 
itself,  is  good ;  it  may  be  faint ;  it  may  be  short :  it 
must  at  any  rate  be  impure :  yet,  while  it  lasts,  and 
before  any  bad  consequences  arrive,  it  is  as  good  as  any 
other  that  is  not  more  intense."  3  Similarly  J.  S.  Mill 
writes :  "  The  morality  of  the  action  depends  entirely 
upon  the  intention,  that  is,  upon  what  the  agent  wills  to 
do.  But  the  motive,  that  is,  the  feeling  which  makes 
him  will  so  to  do,  when  it  makes  no  difference  in  the  act, 
makes  none  in  the  morality."  *  The  distinction  has, 
however,  been  obscured,  if  not  ignored,  by  later  and 
especially  by  contemporary  writers.  '  Motive '  is  now 
generally  used  as  the  synonym  of  '  end '  or  '  intention* ; 
and  the  inseparability  of  the  dynamical  from  the  teleo- 
logical  aspect  of  the  act  of  choice  affords  good  reason  for 
the  application  of  the  same  term  to  both.  T.  H.  Green 
has,  with  especial  persuasiveness,  insisted  upon  the  indis- 
soluble unity  of  motive  and  end;  and  his  influence  is 
chiefly  responsible  for  the  change  in  terminology.  But, 

1  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  x.  §  9. 

2  Utilitarianism,  ch.  ii. 

3  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  x.  §  10,  and  Note. 

4  Utilitarianism,  ch.  ii. 


74  Introduction 

though  inseparable,  these  two  aspects  of  choice  are  not 
indistinguishable ;  and  it  is  as  necessary  as  ever,  for  clear 
thinking,  to  distinguish  them.1 

Yet,  as  Professor  Dewey  remarks,2  the  very  psycho- 
logical confusion  of  pleasure  as  object  of  desire  with 
pleasure  as  motive  "  testifies  to  a  right  psychological  in- 
stinct :  that  which  is  an  aim  of  action  must  also  move 
to  action.  There  must  be  an  identification  of  the  real 
concrete  ideal  with  the  impelling  spring  to  action. 
Unless  the  aim  or  ideal  itself  becomes  a  moving  force, 
it  is  barren  and  helpless.  Unless  the  moving  force  be- 
comes itself  idealised,  unless  it  is  permeated  with  the 
object  aimed  at,  it  remains  mere  impulse,  blind  and 
irrational."  Perhaps  the  best  term  by  which  to  express 
that  concrete  unity  of  the  ideal  content  and  the  impulsive 
force  which  makes  possible  its  realisation  in  the  act  of 
choice,  is  Butler's  term  '  interest/  The  word  suggests  both 
the  objective  and  the  subjective,  both  the  ideational  and 
the  sentient,  elements  in  choice.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
object  must  interest  me — that  is,  must  appeal,  not  merely 
to  thought,  but  to  feeling.  If  it  is  to  become  the  end  or 
motive  of  my  activity,  the  object  of  my  choice,  it  must 
attract  or  please  me.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  less 
true  that  I  must  be  interested  in  it,  that  my  feeling  must 
gather  round  the  idea  of  the  object  as  its  centre.  As 
Butler  says,  "  the  very  idea  of  interest  .  .  .  consists  in 
this,  that  an  appetite  or  affection  enjoys  its  object." 
Moreover,  the  object  which  interests  me,  while  it  may  be 
my  own  subjective  condition  or  state  of  feeling,  may  also 
be  some  thing  or  person  or  state  of  affairs — some  '  con- 
dition of  things  ' — quite  other  than  myself.  The  object 
in  which  I  am  interested,  or  in  which  I  find  my  pleasure, 
may  be  pleasure  itself — my  own  or  another's ;  or  it  may 

1  It  might  perhaps  be  questioned  whether,  while  all  ends  are  motives, 
we  ought  not  to  admit  the  existence  of  motives  which  are  not  ends.     See 
the  discussion  on  the  meaning  of  '  motive '  in  the  International  Journal 
of  Ethics,  October,  1893,  and  January,  1894. 

2  The  Study  of  Ethics,  p.  50. 


The  Psychological  Basis  75 

be  something  quite  different  from  pleasure.  But  an 
object  there  must  be :  if  you  cannot  divorce  it  from  me, 
neither  can  you  divorce  me  from  it.  Choice  is  always 
the  expression  of  interest.  It  is  neither  the  expression 
of  '  self-interest/  nor  is  it  strictly  '  disinterested.'  It 
has  always  both  an  objective  and  a  subjective  side ;  and 
according  as  we  lay  the  stress  upon  the  objective  or  upon 
the  subjective  aspect  of  it,  we  shall  call  the  choice  '  dis- 
interested/ because  I  am  interested  in  an  object,  or 
'  interested,'  because  the  object  interests  me.  Within 
this  omnipresent  interest  of  choice,  room  is  found  for  all 
the  '  disinterested  '  enthusiasms  of  life. 

"We  have  now  determined,  as  precisely  as  we  can,  the 
function  of  feeling  in  the  life  of  will.  First,  in  that 
animal  life  of  instinct  and  impulse  which,  though  invol- 
untary, yet  contains  the  elements  of  volition,  we  saw 
that  the  otherwise  blind  activity  is  guided  by  the  illu- 
mination of  feeling.  Those  animal  tendencies  are  dark 
enough,  they  make  for  a  goal  by  the  animal  unseen,  along 
a  path  of  which  only  the  next  step  can  be  discerned ;  it 
is  a  brief  straight  road,  that  of  animal  life,  and  travelled 
step  by  step.  Gradually,  as  we  rise  in  the  scale  of 
human  striving  and  achievement,  the  vision  grows  and 
strengthens,  and  further  reaches  of  the  road  are  seen, 
and  at  last  the  goal  itself  to  which  it  leads.  But  the 
guidance  of  feeling  is  not  even  now  given  up ;  it  is  only 
illuminated  by  the  fuller  light  of  intellectual  insight. 
The  goal  itself  is  seized  by  feeling  as  well  as  by  thought, 
and  the  several  steps  towards  it  are  felt  as  well  as 
known.  But  to  detach  feeling  from  thought,  and  to  say 
that  we  pursue  pleasure  only,  is  as  unscientific  as  to 
detach  thought  from  feeling,  and  to  say  that  our  active 
life  contains  no  element  of  feeling  at  all.  Life  means 
interests  or  focal  points  of  attention,  apperceptive  centres  ; 
and  we  can  neither  have  interests  without  a  self  to  feel 
them,  nor  evolve  them  out  of  a  merely  sentient  self.  To 
attempt  either  explanation  is  to  attempt  an  unscientific 


76  Introduction 

and  contradictory  tour  de  force.  The  entrance  of  will 
upon  the  field  of  activity  does  not  mean  deliverance 
from  the  guidance  of  feeling ;  what  it  does  mean  is  such 
a  transfiguration  of  the  old  guide  that  it  is  hard  to  re- 
cognise the  familiar  face  and  voice. 

LITERATURE. 

i.    ON   THE   GENERAL   PSYCHOLOGICAL  BASIS. 

B.  Bosanquet,  Psychology  of  the  Moral  Self,  especially  Lectures  vi.-ix. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  (3rd  ed.) 

S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  i.  ch.  i. 

J.  Dewey,  The  Study  of  Ethics,  pp.  13-44. 

W.  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  ch.  xxvi. 

Hb'ffding,  Psychology,  ch.  vii. 

J.  M.  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  part  iv. 

ii.  ON  THE  PLACE  OF  PLEASURE  IN  CHOICB. 

Aristotle,  Nic.  Eth.,  bk.  x.  ch.  iv. 

Butler,  Sermons,  xi. 

J.  S.  Mill,  Utilitarianism,  ch.  iv. 

H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  iv. 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  i.  §§  154-170. 

W.  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  pp.  549-559. 

J.  M.  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  vol.  ii.  pp.  320-328. 

S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  pp.  186-225. 

F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  pp.  226-235  ;  Mind,  O.S.,  vol.  xiii.  pp. 

1-36. 

J.  Dewey,  The  Study  of  Ethics,  pp.  45-56. 
J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  iii.  (3rd  ed.) 
J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  pp.  92-111. 


PART    I 
THE     MORAL     IDEAL 


THE    MOEAL    IDEAL 


Types  of  ethical  theory  :  Hedonism,  Rationalism, 
Eudsemonism. — We  are  now  prepared  to  attempt  the 
solution  of  the  ethical  problem,  the  nature  of  the  moral 
ideal  or  of  the  ethical  end.  We  are  led  to  state  the 
problem  in  this  way,  whether  we  approach  it  from  the 
ancient  standpoint  of  good,  or  from  the  modern  stand- 
point of  duty  and  law.  In  the  former  case,  we  find  that 
conduct,  being  the  organisation  of  impulses  into  rational 
ends,  implies,  as  its  unifying  or  organising  principle, 
the  constant  presence  and  operation,  implicit  or  explicit, 
of  some  single  central  end,  of  some  comprehensive 
ideal  of  the  total  meaning  of  life,  to  be  realised  in  the 
details  of  its  several  activities.  The  logic  of  the  life  of 
a  rational  being  implies  the  guidance  of  a  supreme  end 
as  its  central  and  organising  principle.  The  question  of 
ethics  in  this  aspect  of  it  is :  What  is  the  chief  end  of 
man  ?  What  may  he,  being  such  as  he  is,  worthily  set 
before  him  as  the  summum  bonum  of  his  life  ?  Which 
of  the  alternative  and  conflicting  types  of  selfhood  may 
he  take  as  his  ideal  ?  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  approach 
the  problem  from  the  more  modern  standpoint  of  law 
and  duty,  we  are  led  to  substantially  the  same  statement 
of  it  A  rational  being  cannot,  as  such,  be  content  to 
live  a  life  of  mere  obedience  to  rule,  even  to  the  rule  of 
conscience.  Mere  authority,  human  or  divine,  does  not 


80  The  Moral  Ideal 

permanently  satisfy  him.  The  conflicts,  or  at  least  the 
difficulties,  which  arise  in  the  application  of  the  several 
moral  laws  or  principles  to  the  details  of  practice,  lead  to 
the  attempt  to  codify  these  laws,  and  such  codification 
implies  once  more  a  unifying  principle — the  discovery  of 
the  common  '  spirit  of  the  laws.'  For  their  absoluteness 
pertains  to  the  spirit  and  not  to  the  letter.  They  are  the 
several  paths  towards  some  absolute  good.  Why  is  it 
right  to  speak  the  truth,  to  be  just,  and  temperate,  and 
benevolent  ?  What  is  the  common  ideal  of  which  these 
are  the  several  manifestations — the  ideal  which  abides 
even  in  their  change  ?  The  law  of  the  several  moral  laws 
can  be  found  only  in  the  claim  of  an  absolute  ideal ; 
their  authority  must  find  its  seat  and  explanation  in  the 
persistent  and  rightful  dominion  of  some  one  end  over 
all  the  other  possible  or  actual  ends  of  human  life. 

Now,  when  we  look  at  the  history  of  ethical  thought, 
we  find  that,  from  the  beginning  of  reflection  down  to  our 
own  time,  two  opposed  types  of  theory  have  maintained 
themselves,  and  each  type  has  based  itself,  more  or  less 
explicitly,  upon  a  corresponding  view  of  human  nature. 
On  the  one  hand,  man  has  been  regarded  as,  either  ex- 
clusively or  fundamentally,  a  sentient  being ;  and  upon 
this  psychology  there  has  been  built  up  a  hedonistic 
theory  of  the  moral  ideal.  If  man  is  essentially  a  sen- 
tient being,  his  good  must  be  a  sentient  good,  or  pleasure  ; 
this  type  of  theory  we  may  call  Hedonism,  or  the  Ethics 
of  Sensibility.  It  is  the  theory  of  the  Cyrenaics  and 
Epicureans  amongst  the  ancients,  and  of  the  Utilitarians, 
whether  empirical,  rational,  or  evolutional,  in  modern 
times.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  held  with  no 
less  confidence  that  man  is,  either  exclusively  or  essen- 
tially, a  rational  being ;  and  that  his  good  is,  therefore, 
not  a  sentient  but  a  rational  good.  This  type  of  theory 
we  may  call  Rationalism,  or  the  Ethics  of  Eeason.  It 
is  the  theory  of  the  ancient  Cynics  and  Stoics,  and,  in 
modern  times,  of  the  Intuitionists  and  of  Kant.  Either 


The  Moral  Ideal  81 

theory  might  claim  for  itself  the  vague  term  '  self-realisa- 
tion.' The  one  finds  in  feeling,  the  other  in  reason,  the 
deeper  and  truer  self;  to  the  one  the  claims  of  the 
sentient,  to  the  other  the  claims  of  the  rational  self, 
seem  paramount. 

A  closer  study  of  the  course  of  moral  reflection  re- 
veals two  forms — an  extreme  and  a  moderate,  of  either 
type  of  ethical  theory.  Extreme  Hedonism,  .excluding 
reason  altogether,  or  resolving  it  into  sensibility,  would 
exhibit  the  ideal  life  as  a  life  of  pure  sentiency,  undis- 
turbed by  reason,  or  into  which  reason  has  been  ab- 
sorbed. Extreme  Eationalism,  on  the  other  hand,  deny- 
ing the  place  of  feeling  in  the  good  of  a  rational  being, 
would  exhibit  the  ideal  life  as  a  life  of  pure  thought, 
undisturbed  by  any  intrusion  of  sensibility.  But  neither 
of  these  extremes  can  long  maintain  itself.  Neither 
element  can  be  absolutely  excluded,  without  manifestly 
deducting  from  the  total  efficiency  of  the  resulting  life. 
Accordingly  we  find  that,  while  the  logic  of  their  posi- 
tions would  separate  the  theories  as  widely  as  possible, 
the  necessities  of  the  moral  life  itself  tend  to  bring  them 
nearer  to  each  other.  Hedonism  cannot  long  avoid  the 
reference  to  reason,  Eationalism  the  reference  to  sensi- 
bility. Hence  result  a  moderate  version  of  the  Ethics 
of  Sensibility,  which,  instead  of  excluding  reason,  sub- 
ordinates it  to  feeling,  and  a  moderate  version  of  the 
Ethics  of  Reason,  which,  instead  of  excluding  feeling, 
subordinates  it  to  reason.  Moderate  Hedonism  recognises 
the  function  of  reason,  first  in  devising  the  means  to- 
wards an  end  which  is  constituted  by  sensibility,  and 
later  even  in  the  constitution  of  the  end  itself.  Moderate 
Eationalism  recognises  the  place  of  sensibility,  at  first  as 
the  mere  accompaniment  of  the  good  life,  and  later  as 
entering  into  the  very  texture  of  goodness  itself.  Such 
an  approach  of  the  one  theory  to  the  other,  such  a 
tendency  to  compromise  between  them,  suggests  the  more 
excellent  way  of  a  theory  which  shall  base  itself  on  the 

F 


82  The  Moral  Ideal 

total  nature  of  man,  and  correlate  its  various  ele- 
ments of  thought  and  feeling  in  the  unity  of  a  total 
personal  life.  This  theory  we  may  call,  after  Aristotle. 
Eudtemonism,  or  the  Ethics  of  Personality ;  and  we  shall 
endeavour  to  demonstrate  its  necessity  and  value  by  a 
critical  consideration,  first,  of  Hedonism,  the  Ethics  of 
Sensibility;  and  secondly,  of  Rationalism,  the  Ethics  of 
Reason. 


83 


CHAPTER   I. 

HEDONISM,    OR   THE   ETHICS    OF   SENSIBILITY. 
I. — Development  of  the  Theory. 

1.  (A)  Pure  Hedonism,  or  Cyrenaicism. — The  earliest 
statement  of  the  hedonistic  view  of  life  is  also  the  most 
extreme.  We  owe  it  to  Aristippus,  the  founder  of  the 
Cyrenaic  school.  He  had  learned  from  Socrates  that  the 
true  wisdom  of  life  lies  in  foresight  or  insight  into  the  con- 
sequences of  our  actions,  in  an  accurate  calculation  of  their 
results,  pleasurable  and  painful,  in  the  distant  as  well  as 
in  the  immediate  future.  The  chief  and  only  good  of  life, 
then,  seems  to  be  pleasure.  And  all  pleasures  are  alike  in 
kind ;  they  differ  only  in  intensity  or  degree.  Socrates 
had  taught  that  the  pleasures  of  the  soul  are  preferable 
to  those  of  the  body ;  Aristippus  finds  the  latter  to  be 
better,  that  is,  intenser,  than  the  former.  He  had  also 
learned  from  Protagoras,  the  Sophist,  that  the  sensation 
of  the  moment  is  the  only  object  of  knowledge ;  and  his 
scepticism  of  the  future,  in  comparison  with  the  certainty 
of  the  present,  led  him  to  reject  the  Socratic  principle 
of  calculation.  If  the  momentary  experience  is  the  only 
certain  reality,  then  the  calculating  wisdom  of  Socrates, 
with  its  measuring-line  laid  to  the  fleeting  moments,  is 
not  the  best  method  of  life.  Eather  ought  we  to  make 
the  most  of  each  moment  ere  it  passes ;  for,  even  while 
we  have  been  calculating  its  value,  it  has  escaped  us, 


84  The  Moral  Ideal 

and  the  moments  do  not  return.  Ought  we  not,  then, 
with  a  miser's  jealousy,  to  guard  the  interest  of  the 
moment,  but  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow  ?  Is  not 
this  the  true  economy  of  life  ?  To  sacrifice  the  present 
to  the  future,  is  unwarranted  and  perilous ;  the  present 
is  ours,  the  future  may  never  be.  The  very  fact  that  we 
are  the  children  of  time,  and  not  of  eternity,  makes  the 
claim  of  the  present,  even  of  the  momentary  present, 
imperious  and  supreme.  To  look  before  and  after  were 
to  defeat  the  end  of  life,  to  miss  that  pleasure  which 
is  essentially  a  thing  of  the  present.  Not  the  Socratic 
prudence,  therefore,  but  a  careless  surrender  to  present 
joys,  is  the  true  rule  of  life.  We  live  only  from  moment 
to  moment ;  let  us  live,  then,  in  the  moments,  packing 
them  full,  ere  yet  they  pass,  with  intensest  gratification. 
A  life  of  feeling,  pure  and  simple,  heedless  and  unthink- 
ing, undisturbed  by  reason, — such  is  the  Cyrenaic  ideal. 
It  is  a  product  of  the  sunny  Pagan  spirit,  which  has  not 
yet  felt  '  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight  of  all  this  un- 
intelligible world.'  And  if  such  a  creed  is  founded  in  a 
deep  scepticism,  there  is  in  this  scepticism  no  pain  or 
despair,  but  rather  a  calm  and  glad  acceptance  of  the 
ethical  limitations  which  it  implies.  Aristippus  is  glad 
to  be  rid  of  the  Socratic  concern  for  an  eternal  and  ideal 
welfare  in  which  he  has  ceased  to  believe.  His  is,  indeed, 
a  life  without  a  horizon,  a  life  which  has  shrunk  within 
the  compass  of  the  momentary  present,  a  life  of  pure  sen- 
sibility, with  no  end  to  satisfy  the  reason.  Yet  it  is  a 
life  that  satisfies  him.  For  is  not  the  horizon  apt  to  be 
dark  and  threatening,  and  to  sadden  with  its  lowering 
clouds  the  sunshine  of  the  present  ?  And  what  is  reason 
but  sensation  after  all  ? 

Cyrenaicism  could  hardly  be  the  creed  of  the  modern 
Christian  world.  For  us  such  an  ideal  would  be  at  best 
an  ideal  of  despair  rather  than  of  hope.  Reason  could 
hardly  in  us  be  so  utterly  subjected  to  sensibility ;  such 


Hedonism  85 

scepticism  would,  at  any  rate,  make  us  so  '  sick  and  sorry  ' 
that  we  should  lose  that  very  joy  in  the  present  which 
the  Cyrenaic  reaped  from  his  unconcern  for  the  morrow. 
And  yet  our  century  and  our  generation  have  witnessed 
an  attempted  revival  of  the  Cyrenaic  ideal.  Did  not 
Byron  and  Heine,  out  of  their  sceptical  doubt  of  any 
other  meaning  in  life,  use  words  like  these  ?  Was  not 
their  message  to  their  fellows  that  to  live  is  to  feel, 
and  that  the  measure  of  life's  fulness  is  the  intensity  of 
its  passion  ?  And  what  else  did  '  aestheticism '  mean 
than  a  recoil  from  an  intellectual  to  a  sentient  ideal ; 
is  it  fanciful  to  see  in  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean  a 
splendid  attempt  to  rehabilitate  the  Cyrenaic  view  of 
life  ?  Its  closing  words  tell  how  perfectly  its  author 
has  caught  the  echo  of  that  ancient  creed :  "  How  goodly 
had  the  vision  been  !  one  long  unfolding  of  beauty  and 
energy  in  things,  upon  the  closing  of  which  he  might 
gratefully  utter  his  Vixi.  .  .  .  For  still,  in  a  shadowy 
world,  his  deeper  wisdom  had  ever  been,  with  a  sense  of 
economy,  with  a  jealous  estimate  of  gain  and  loss,  to  use 
life,  not  as  a  means  to  some  problematic  end,  but,  as  far 
as  might  be,  from  dying  hour  to  dying  hour,  an  end  in 
itself,  a  kind  of  music,  all  sufficing  to  the  duly  trained 
ear,  even  as  it  died  out  on  the  air." 

And  although  it  is  only  in  the  school  of  Aristippus 
that  this  pure  form  of  the  hedonistic  creed  has  found  its 
philosophic  expression,  it  is  a  judgment  of  life  which 
has  again  and  again  gained  utterance  for  itself  in  litera- 
ture. It  is  a  mood  of  the  human  mind  which  must 
recur  with  every  lapse  into  moral  scepticism.  Whenever 
life  loses  its  meaning,  or  when  that  meaning  shrinks  to 
the  experience  of  the  present,  when  no  enduring  purpose 
or  permanent  value  is  found  in  this  fleeting  earthly  life, 
when  in  it  is  discerned  no  whence  or  whither,  but  only 
a  brief  blind  process,  then  the  conclusion  is  drawn,  with 
a  fine  logical  perception,  that  the  interests  of  the  present 


86  The  Moral  Ideal 

have  a  paramount  claim,  and  that  present  enjoyment 
and  unconcern  is  the  only  good  in  life.  If  indeed 

"  We  are  no  other  than  a  moving  row 
Of  Magic  Shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go 

Round  with  the  Sun-illumin'd  Lantern  held 
In  Midnight  by  the  Master  of  the  Show;" 

if  the  movement  of  our  life  is  from  Nothing  to  Nothing; 
if,  truly  seen,  that  life  is  but 

"  A  Moment's  Halt — a  momentary  taste 
Of  Being  from  the  Well  amid  the  Waste — 

And  lo  !  the  phantom  caravan  has  reach'd 
The  Nothing  it  set  out  from," — 

then  surely  Omar's  logic  is  irresistible : 

"  Some  for  the  Glories  of  This  World  ;  and  some 
Sigh  for  the  Prophet's  Paradise  to  come  ; 

Ah  !  take  the  Cash,  and  let  the  Credit  go, 
•  Nor  heed  the  rumble  of  a  distant  Drum. 

Come,  fill  the  Cup,  and  in  the  fire  of  Spring 
Your  Winter-garment  of  Repentance  fling  : 

The  Bird  of  Time  has  but  a  little  way 
To  fly — and  lo  !  the  bird  is  on  the  wing. 

I  must  abjure  the  Balm  of  life,  I  must, 
Scared  by  some  After-reckoning  ta'en  on  trust, 

Or  lured  with  hope  of  some  Diviner  Drink, 
To  fill  the  Cup — when  crumbled  into  Dust  ! 

Oh  threats  of  Hell  and  hopes  of  Paradise  ! 
One  thing  at  least  is  certain — This  life  flies  ; 
One  thing  is  certain,  and  the  rest  is  Lies  : 
The  Flower  that  once  has  blown  for  ever  dies." l 

It  is  the  logic  of  Horace  as  well  as  of  Omar ;  for  though 
the  Eoman  poet  is  rather  an  Epicurean  than  a  Cyrenaic, 
yet  he  strikes  the  true  Cyrenaic  chord  again  and  again. 
Man  is  a  creature  of  time ;  why  should  he  toil  for  an 
eternal  life  ?  "  Spring  flowers  keep  not  always  the  same 

1  Ruldiydt,  of  Omar  Khayydm.     Fitzgerald's  trans. 


Hedonism  87 

charm,  nor  beams  the  ruddy  moon  with  face  unchanged ; 
why  harass  with  eternal  designs  a  mind  too  weak  to  com- 
pass them  ? "  "  God  in  his  providence  shrouds  in  the 
darkness  of  night  the  issue  of  future  time,  and  smiles  if 
a  mortal  flutter  to  pierce  further  than  he  may.  Be  care- 
ful to  regulate  serenely  what  is  present  with  you ;  all 
else  is  swept  along  in  the  fashion  of  the  stream,  which 
at  one  time,  within  the  heart  of  its  channel,  peacefully 
glides  down  to  the  Tuscan  sea ;  at  another,  whirls  along 
worn  stones  and  uprooted  trees  and  flocks  and  houses  all 
together,  amid  the  roaring  of  the  hills  and  neighbouring 
wood,  whene'er  a  furious  deluge  chafes  the  quiet  rills. 
He  will  live  master  of  himself,  and  cheerful,  who  has 
the  power  to  say  from  day  to  day,  '  I  have  lived !  to- 
morrow let  the  Sire  overspread  the  sky  either  with 
cloudy  gloom  or  with  unsullied  light ;  yet  he  will  not 
render  of  no  effect  aught  that  lies  behind,  nor  shape 
anew  and  make  a  thing  not  done,  what  once  the  flying 
hour  has  borne  away.' "  All  things  change  and  pass 
away,  nor  has  man  himself  any  abiding  destiny ;  his  best 
wisdom  is  to  clutch  from  the  hands  of  Fate  the  flowers 
she  offers,  for  they  perish  even  as  he  thinks  to  gather 
them.  This  logic  of  Omar  and  of  Horace  is  also  the 
logic  of  Ecclesiastes.  "  Too  much  wisdom  is  much  grief, 
and  he  that  increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow.  .  .  . 
Tor  what  hath  man  of  all  his  labour,  and  of  all  the  vex- 
ation of  his  heart,  wherein  he  hath  laboured  under  the 
sun  ?  .  .  .  Then  I  commended  mirth,  because  a  man 
hath  no  better  thing  than  to  eat,  and  to  drink,  and  to  be 
merry ;  for  that  shall  abide  with  him  of  his  labour  the 
days  of  his  life  which  God  giveth  him  under  the  sun." 

When  we  compare  the  Eastern  with  the  Western,  the 
Persian  and  Hebraic  with  the  Greek  and  Eoman,  expres- 
sions of  the  Cyrenaic  principle,  we  cannot  help  feeling 
that,  while  the  common  basis  of  both  is  a  profound  moral 
scepticism,  the  loss  of  faith  in  any  enduring  end  or  sub- 

1  Horace,  Odes,  in.  20  (Lonsdale  and  Lee's  trans.) 


88  The  Moral  Ideal 

stantial  good  in  life,  this  scepticism  has  engendered  in 
the  one  case  a  pessimistic  mood  which  is  hardly  per- 
ceptible in  the  other.  Omar  and  Ecclesiastes  clutch  at 
the  delights  of  sense  and  time,  the  pleasure  of  the  mo- 
ment, as  the  only  refuge  from  the  moral  despair  which 
reflection  breeds.  The  only  cure  for  the  ills  of  thought 
is  a  careless  and  unthinking  abandon  to  the  pleasures  of 
the  present.  But  always  in  the  background  of  the  mind, 
and,  whenever  reflection  is  reawakened,  in  the  foreground 
too,  is  the  sad  and  irresistible  conviction  that,  for  a 
rational  being,  such  a  merely  sentient  good  is  in  strict- 
ness no  good  at  all ;  that  for  a  being  whose  very  nature 
it  is  to  look  before  and  after,  and  to  consider  the  total 
meaning  of  his  life,  such  a  preoccupation  with  the  ex- 
perience of  the  moment,  as  the  only  moral  reality,  must 
render  life  essentially  unmeaning  and  not  worth  living. 
It  is  little  wonder,  therefore,  that  this  moral  scepticism 
soon  became  philosophically  speechless.  Even  the  Cyren- 
aics  were  unable  to  maintain  their  self -consistency  in  the 
statement  of  it.  An  ethic  of  pure  sensibility,  an  absolute 
Hedonism,  is  impossible.  A  merely  sentient  good  cannot 
be  the  good  of  a  being  who  is  rational  as  well  as  sentient ; 
the  true  life  of  a  reflective  being  cannot  be  unreflective. 
In  order  to  construct  an  ideal,  some  reference  to  reason 
is  necessary;  even  a  successful  sentient  life  implies  the 
guidance  and  operation  of  thought.  Accordingly,  we  find 
even  the  Cyrenaics  admitting,  in  spite  of  themselves,  that 
prudence  is  essential  to  the  attainment  of  pleasure.  A 
man  must  be  master  of  himself,  as  a  rider  is  master  of 
his  horse ;  he  must  be  able  to  say  of  his  pleasures  that  he 
is  their  possessor,  not  they  his — t^w,  OVK  lyofiai.  Such 
self-mastery  and  self-possession  is  the  work  of  reason, 
and  a  life  which  is  not  thus  rationally  ordered  must 
soon  be  wrecked  on  the  shoals  of  appetite  and  passion. 

2.   (B)  Modified  Hedonism  :    (a)  Ancient,   or  Epi- 
cureanism.— This  rehabilitation  of  the  Socratic  master- 


Hedonism  89 

virtue  of  prudence,  suggested  by  the  later  Cyrenaics,  was 
completed  by  the  Epicureans,  who,  after  the  Platonic 
and  Aristotelian  insistence  on  the  supreme  claims  of 
reason  in  the  conduct  of  human  life,  find  it  impossible 
to  conceive  a  good  from  which  reason  has  been  elimin- 
ated, or  to  which  reason  does  not  point  the  way.  The 
end  of  life,  they  hold,  is  not  the  pleasure  of  the  moment, 
but  a  sum  of  pleasures,  a  pleasant  life.  All  that  was 
necessary,  to  effect  the  transition  from  the  Cyrenaic  ex- 
treme to  this  moderate  type  of  Hedonism,  was  to  press 
to  its  logical  development  the  Socratic  principle  that  a 
truly  happy,  or  consistently  pleasant,  life  must  be  also 
a  rational,  reflective,  and  well-considered  life.  Even 
within  the  Cyrenaic  school,  we  find  an  approach  towards 
the  moderate  or  Epicurean  position.  Theodorus,  a  later 
member  of  the  school,  holds  that  the  end  is  not  momen- 
tary pleasure,  but  a  permanent  state  of  gladness  (xa/°«)  5 
and  Hegesias,  still  later,  maintains  that  painlessness, 
reached  through  indifference  to  pain,  rather  than  posi- 
tive pleasure  or  enjoyment,  is  the  attainable  end  of  life. 
These  suggestions  were  developed,  through  the  reassertion 
of  the  Socratic  principle  of  prudence,  strengthened  by  the 
Platonic  and  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  guiding  func- 
tion of  reason  in  the  life  of  a  rational  being,  into  the 
Epicurean  system. 

Epicurus  fully  recognises  the  indispensableness  of  rea- 
son in  the  conduct  of  life.  The  end  is  pleasure,  but 
this  end  cannot  be  attained  except  under  the  guidance 
of  reason ;  feeling  would  be  but  a  blind  and  perilous 
guide  to  its  own  satisfaction.  Eeason  is  the  hand- 
maid of  sensibility,  and  without  the  aid  of  the  former 
the  latter  would  be  reduced  to  iinpotency.  The  task 
of  life  is  discovered,  and  its  accomplishment  is  tested, 
by  sensibility ;  but  the  execution  of  the  task  is  the  work 
of  reason.  For  it  is  reason  alone  that  makes  possible 
the  most  perfect  gratification  of  feeling,  eliminating  the 
pain  as  far  as  possible,  reducing  the  shocks  and  jars  to 


90  TJie  Moral  Ideal 

a  minimum,  and,  where  the  pain  is  unavoidable,  showing 
how  it  is  the  way  to  a  larger  and  more  enduring,  a  deeper 
and  intenser,  pleasure.  The  happiness  of  man  is  a  subtler 
and  more  enduring  satisfaction  than  that  of  which  the 
animal,  preoccupied  with  the  feeling  of  the  moment,  is 
capable.  Man's  susceptibilities  to  pleasure  and  pain  are 
so  much  keener  and  more  varied,  his  horizon,  as  a  rational 
being,  is  so  much  larger  than  the  animal's,  that  the  same 
interpretation  will  not  serve  for  both  lives.  He  cannot 
shut  out  the  past  and  the  future,  and  surrender  himself, 
with  careless  limitation,  to  the  momentary  '  now.'  It  is 
the  outlook,  the  horizon,  the  prospect  and  the  retrospect, 
that  give  the  tone  to  his  present  experience.  He  abides, 
though  his  experience  changes ;  and  his  happiness  must, 
just  because  it  is  his,  be  permanent  and  abiding  as  the 
self  whose  happiness  it  is.  Atomic  moments  of  pleasure 
cannot,  therefore,  be  the  good  of  man ;  that  good  must 
be  a  life  of  pleasure.  An  unorganised  or  chaotic  life,  at 
the  beck  and  call  of  every  stray  desire,  would  be  a  life 
not  of  happiness  but  of  misery  to  such  a  being  as  man ; 
in  virtue  of  his  rational  nature,  he  must  organise  his  life, 
must  build  up  its  moments  into  the  hours  and  days  and 
years  of  a  total  experience.  While,  therefore,  the  end 
or  fundamental  conception  under  which  he  must  bring 
all  his  separate  activities,  the  ultimate  unifying  principle 
of  his  life,  is  sentient  satisfaction ;  while  the  ultimate 
term  of  human  experience  is  not  reason,  but  sensibility, 
and  man's  good  is  essentially  identical  with  the  animal's, 
— yet  so  different  are  the  means  to  their  accomplish- 
ment, so  different  is  the  conduct  of  the  two  lives,  that 
the  interests  of  clear  thinking  demand  the  emphatic 
assertion  of  the  difference,  no  less  than  of  the  identity. 
"  Wherefore,"  says  Epicurus,  "  we  call  pleasure  the  alpha 
and  omega  of  a  blessed  life.  Pleasure  is  our  first  and 
kindred  good.  From  it  is  the  commencement  of  every 
choice  and  every  aversion,  and  to  it  we  come  back,  and 
make  feeling  the  rule  by  which  to  judge  of  every  good 


t  Hedonism  9 1 

thing.  And  since  pleasure  is  our  first  and  native  good, 
for  that  reason  we  do  not  choose  every  pleasure  what- 
soever, but  ofttimes  pass  over  many  pleasures  when  a 
greater  annoyance  ensues  from  them.  And  ofttimes  we 
consider  pains  superior  to  pleasures,  and  submit  to  the 
pain  for  a  long  time,  when  it  is  attended  for  us  with  a 
greater  pleasure.  All  pleasure,  therefore,  because  of  its 
kinship  with  our  nature,  is  a  good,  but  it  is  not  in  all 
cases  our  choice ;  even  as  every  pain  is  an  evil,  though 
pain  is  not  always,  and  in  every  case,  to  be  shunned. 
It  is,  however,  by  measuring  one  against  another,  and  by 
looking  at  the  conveniences  and  inconveniences,  that  all 
these  things  must  be  judged.  Sometimes  we  treat  the 
good  as  an  evil,  and  the  evil,  on  the  contrary,  as  a  good." 
"  It  is  not  an  unbroken  succession  of  drinking  feasts  and 
of  revelry,  not  the  pleasures  of  sexual  love,  nor  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  fish  and  other  delicacies  of  a  splendid  table, 
which  produce  a  pleasant  life ;  it  is  sober  reasoning, 
searching  out  the  reasons  for  every  choice  and  avoid- 
ance, and  banishing  those  beliefs  through  which  greatest 
tumults  take  possession  of  the  soul.  Of  all  this,  the 
beginning,  and  the  greatest  good,  is  prudence.  Where- 
fore, prudence  is  a  more  precious  thing  even  than  philo- 
sophy :  from  it  grow  all  the  other  virtues, —  for  it  teaches 
that  we  cannot  lead  a  life  of  pleasure  which  is  not  also  a 
life  of  prudence,  honour,  and  justice,  nor  lead  a  life  of  pru- 
dence, honour,  and  justice  which  is  not  also  a  life  of  plea- 
sure. For  the  virtues  have  grown  into  one  with  a  pleas- 
ant life,  and  a  pleasant  life  is  inseparable  from  them."  ] 

Deeper  reflection  upon  the  course  of  human  affairs  led 
the  Epicureans,  as  it  had  led  the  Cyrenaics,  to  pessimism. 
The  good,  in  the  sense  of  positive  pleasure,  is  not,  they 
find,  the  lot  of  man  ;  all  that  he  may  hope  for  is  the 
negative  pleasure  that  comes  with  the  release  from  pain. 
"  By  pleasure  we  mean  the  absence  of  pain  from  the  body 
and  of  trouble  from  the  soul."  And  even  this  is  not 

1  Letter  of  Epicurus  (Wallace's  Epicureanism,  pp.  129-131). 


92  The  Moral  Ideal 

always  to  be  attained.  If  we  would  escape  the  pain  of 
unsatisfied  desire,  we  must  reduce  our  desires.  Fortune 
is  to  be  feared,  even  when  bringing  gifts ;  for  she  is  cap- 
ricious, and  may  at  any  moment  withhold  her  gifts.  Let 
us  give  as  few  hostages  to  fortune,  then,  as  we  can  ;  let  us 
assert  our  independence  of  her,  and,  in  our  own  self- 
sufficiency,  become  indifferent  to  her  fickle  moods.  Let 
us  return,  as  far  as  may  be,  to  the  '  state  of  nature/  since 
nature's  wants  are  few.  "Of  desires  some  are  natural, 
and  some  are  groundless ;  and  of  the  natural,  some  are 
necessary  as  well  as  natural,  and  some  are  natural  only. 
And  of  the  necessary  desires,  some  are  necessary  if  we 
are  to  be  happy,  and  some  if  the  body  is  to  remain  unper- 
turbed, and  some  if  we  are  even  to  live.  By  the  clear 
and  certain  understanding  of  these  things  we  learn  to 
make  every  preference  and  aversion,  so  that  the  body  may 
have  health  and  the  soul  tranquillity,  seeing  that  this  is 
the  sum  and  end  of  a  blessed  life.  For  the  end  of  all  our 
actions  is  to  be  free  from  pain  and  fear ;  and  when  once 
we  have  attained  this,  all  the  tempest  of  the  soul  is  laid, 
seeing  that  the  living  creature  has  not  to  go  to  find  some- 
thing that  is  wanting,  or  to  seek  something  else  by  which 
the  good  of  the  soul  and  of  the  body  will  be  fulfilled. 
When  we  need  pleasure,  is  when  we  are  grieved  because 
of  the  absence  of  pleasure;  but  when  we  feel  no  pain, 
then  we  no  longer  stand  in  need  of  pleasure."  ] 

The  great  maxim  of  the  Epicurean  life  is,  therefore, 
like  that  of  the  Stoic,  that  we  cultivate  a  temper  of  in- 
difference to  pleasure  and  pain,  such  a  tranquillity  of  soul 
(aTapaZ'ia)  as  no  assault  of  fortune  can  avail  to  disturb, 
such  an  inner  peace  of  spirit  as  shall  make  us  independent 
of  fortune's  freaks.  For  the  Epicureans  have  lost  the 
Socratic  faith  in  a  divine  Providence,  the  counterpart  of 
human  prudence,  which  secures  that  a  well-planned  life 
shall  be  successful  in  attaining  its  goal  of  pleasure.  Their 
gods  have  retired  from  the  world,  and  become  careless  of 

1  Letter  of  Epicurus,  loc.  cit. 


Hedonism  93 

human  affairs.  The  true  wisdom,  then,  is  to  break  the 
bonds  that  link  our  destiny  with  the  world's,  and  to  assert 
our  independence  of  fate.  Through  moderation  of  desire 
and  tranquillity  of  soul,  we  become  masters  of  our  own 
destiny,  and  learn  that  our  true  good  is  to  be  sought 
within  rather  than  without.  It  is  our  fear  of  external 
evil  or  calamity,  not  calamity  itself,  that  is  the  chief 
source  of  pain.  Let  us  cease  to  fear  that  which  in  itself 
is  not  terrible.  Even  death,  the  greatest  of  so-called  evils, 
the  worst  of  all  the  blows  which  fortune  can  inflict  upon 
us,  is  an  evil  only  to  him  who  fears  it ;  even  to  it  we  can 
become  indifferent.  "  Accustom  thyself  in  the  belief  that 
death  is  nothing  to  us ;  for  good  and  evil  are  only  where 
they  are  felt,  and  death  is  the  absence  of  all  feeling; 
therefore  a  right  understanding  that  death  is  nothing  to 
us  makes  enjoyable  the  mortality  of  life,  not  by  adding  to 
years  an  illimitable  time,  but  by  taking  away  the  yearn- 
ing after  immortality.  For  in  life  there  can  be  nothing 
to  fear  to  him  who  has  thoroughly  apprehended  that 
there  is  nothing  to  cause  fear  in  what  time  we  are  not 
alive.  Foolish,  therefore,  is  the  man  who  says  that  he 
fears  death,  not  because  it  will  pain  when  it  comes,  but 
because  it  pains  in  the  prospect.  Whatsoever  causes  no 
annoyance  when  it  is  present  causes  only  a  groundless 
pain  by  the  expectation  thereof.  Death,  therefore,  the 
most  awful  of  evils,  is  nothing  to  us ;  seeing  that  when  we 
are,  death  is  not  yet,  and  when  death  comes,  then  we  are 
not.  It  is  nothing,  then,  either  to  the  living  or  the 
dead ;  for  it  is  not  found  with  the  living,  and  the  dead 
exist  no  longer."  l 

Of  this  Epicurean  ideal  we  could  not  have  a  better 
picture  than  that  which  Horace  gives  in  the  Seventh 
Satire  of  the  Second  Book :  "  Who,  then,  is  free  ?  He 
who  is  wise,  over  himself  true  lord,  unterrified  by  want 
and  death  and  bonds ;  who  can  his  passion  stem,  and 
glory  scorn ;  in  himself  complete,  like  a  sphere,  perfectly 

1  Letter  of  Epicurus,  loc.  cit. 


94  The  Moral  Ideal 

round,  so  that  no  external  object  can  rest  on  the  polished 
surface ;  against  such  a  one  fortune's  assault  is  broken." 
It  is  an  ideal  of  rational  self-control,  of  deliverance  from 
the  storms  of  passion  through  the  peace-speaking  voice  of 
reason.  The  state  of  sensibility  is  still  the  ethical  end 
and  criterion ;  but  all  the  attention  is  directed  to  the 
means  by  which  that  end  may  be  compassed,  and  the 
means  are  not  sentient  but  rational.  Nay,  the  end  itself, 
as  we  have  just  seen,  is  rather  a  state  of  indifference,  of 
neutral  feeling,  of  insensibility,  than  a  positive  state  of 
feeling  at  all. 

3.  (I)  Modern  Hedonism  differs  widely  from  ancient, 
British  from  Greek.  If  we  take  Mill  as  the  representative 
of  the  modern  doctrine,  perhaps  the  differences  may  be 
said  to  resolve  themselves,  in  the  last  analysis,  into  three. 

(1)  Ancient  Hedonism,  whether  of  the  Cyrenaic  or  of 
the  Epicurean  type,  was  apt  to  be  pessimistic ;  modern 
Hedonism  is,  on  the  whole,  optimistic.1  While  the  Greek 
moralists  found  themselves  forced  to  conceive  the  end 
rather  as  escape  from  pain  than  as  positive  pleasure, 
their  successors  in  England  (as  well  as  recently  in  Ger- 
many) have  no  hesitation  in  returning  to  the  original 
Cyrenaic  conception  of  the  end  as  real  enjoyment,  as  not 
merely  the  absence  of  pain,  but  the  presence  of  pleasure. 
Mill,  it  is  true,  in  a  significant  admission,  made  almost 
incidentally,  in  the  course  of  his  main  argument,  seems 
on  the  point  of  striking  once  more  the  old  pessimistic  note. 
"  Though  it  is  only  in  a  very  imperfect  state  of  the  world's 
arrangements  that  any  one  can  best  serve  the  happiness 
of  others  by  the  absolute  sacrifice  of  his  own,  yet,  so  long 
as  the  world  is  in  that  imperfect  state,  I  fully  acknowledge 
that  the  readiness  to  make  such  a  sacrifice  is  the  highest 
virtue  to  be  found  in  man.  I  will  add,  that  in  this  con- 
dition of  the  world,  paradoxical  as  the  assertion  may  be, 

1  The  pessimistic  tendency  has  of  late,  to  a  certain  extent,  reasserted 
itself. 


Hedonism  95 

the  conscious  ability  to  do  without  happiness  gives  the 
best  prospect  of  realising  such  happiness  as  is  attainable. 
For  nothing  except  that  consciousness  can  raise  a  person 
above  the  chances  of  life,  by  making  him  feel  that,  let 
fate  and  fortune  do  their  worst,  they  have  not  power  to 
subdue  him ;  which,  once  felt,  frees  him  from  excess  of 
anxiety  concerning  the  evils  of  life,  and  enables  him, 
like  many  a  Stoic  in  the  worst  times  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  to  cultivate  in  tranquillity  the  sources  of  satis- 
faction accessible  to  him,  without  concerning  himself 
about  the  uncertainty  of  their  duration,  any  more  than 
about  their  inevitable  end." *  But  Mill  is  delivered  from 
pessimism  by  his  firm  conviction  that  the  condition  of 
the  world  is  changing  for  the  better,  and  that  in  the 
end  the  course  of  virtue  must  '  run  smooth.'  The  source 
of  this  confidence,  in  Mill  and  his  successors,  is  not  the 
rehabilitation  of  the  old  Socratic  faith  in  a  divine  Pro- 
vidence; another  ground  of  confidence  is  found  in  the 
new  insight  into  the  course  of  things,  which  science  has 
brought  to  man.  Knowledge  is  power,  and  the  might 
of  virtue  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  has  nature  on  its  side. 
The  principle  of  evolution,  it  is  maintained,  shows  us 
that  goodness  does  not  work  against  nature,  but  rather 
assists  nature  in  her  work.  Hedonism,  therefore,  finds 
a  new  basis  in  Evolutionism,  and  puts  forward  the 
new  claim  of  being  the  only  scientific  interpretation  of 
morality.  Yet  we  find  the  most  brilliant  Evolutionist 
of  our  time  maintaining  that  the  ethical  process  and 
the  cosmical  process  are  fundamentally  antagonistic,2  and 
one  of  the  ablest  of  living  Evolutionary  Hedonists  admit- 
ting that  "  the  attempt  to  establish  an  absolute  coinci- 
dence between  virtue  and  happiness  is  in  ethics  what 
the  attempting  to  square  the  circle  or  to  discover  per- 
petual motion  is  in  geometry  and  mechanics." 3 

1  Utilitarianism,  ch.  ii. 

-  Huxley,  Romanes  Lecture,  Evolution  and  Ethics. 

8  Leslie  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  430. 


96  The  Moral  Ideal 

(2)  The  standpoint  of  ancient  Hedonism  was  that  of 
the  individual,  the  standpoint  of  modern  is  that  of  society 
or  mankind  in  general,  or  even,  as  with  Mill,  of  the  entire 
sentient  creation.  While  ancient  Hedonism  was  egoistic, 
the  modern  is  altruistic  or  universalistic.  '  The  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  number '  has  taken  the  place 
of  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  individual ;  the  scope  of 
the  end  has  been  extended  beyond  the  conception  of  its 
ancient  advocates.  The  '  wise  man '  of  the  Epicurean 
school  was  wise  for  his  own  interests ;  his  chief  virtues 
were  self-sufficiency  and  self-dependence.  It  is  true  that 
the  Epicurean  society  was  held  together  by  the  practice, 
on  a  fine  scale,  of  the  virtue  of  friendship,  and  that  its 
members  lived,  in  many  respects,  a  common  life ;  but 
this  feature  of  their  practice  had  no  counterpart  in  their 
ethical  theory.  The  modern  Hedonist,  realising  this 
defect,  and  the  necessity  of  differentiating  his  expanded 
theory  of  the  end  from  the  narrow  conception  of  the 
elder  school,  has  invented  a  new  name  to  express  this 
difference — namely,  '  Utilitarianism.'  The  new  concep- 
tion has  been  only  gradually  reached,  however ;  there  is 
an  interesting  bridge  between  the  old  egoistic  form  of 
Hedonism  and  the  new  altruistic  or  utilitarian  version 
of  it,  in  the  philosophy  of  Paley.  To  this  '  lawyer-like 
mind '  it  seemed  that  we  ought  to  seek  "  the  happiness 
of  mankind,  in  obedience  to  the  will  of  God,  and  for  the 
sake  of  everlasting  happiness."  The  happiness  of  man- 
kind, he  holds,  is  the  '  subject '  or  content  of  morality, 
but  'everlasting  happiness' — our  own,  of  course — is 
the  '  motive.'  The  end,  therefore,  is  our  own  individual 
happiness,  and  the  happiness  of  others  is  to  be  sought 
merely  as  a  means  to  that  end.  Such  a  theory  is,  it  is 
obvious,  thoroughly  egoistic ;  it  is  only  an  improved 
version  of  the  egoism  of  Hobbes,  which  formed  the 
starting-point  of  modern  ethical  reflection.  It  is  to 
Hume,  Bentham,  and  Mill  that  we  owe  the  substitution 
nf  the  general  happiness  for  that  of  the  individual,  as 


Hedonism  9  7 

the  end  of  life.  According  to  each  of  these  writers  the 
true  standpoint  is  that  of  society,  not  that  of  the  indi- 
vidual :  from  the  social  standpoint  alone  can  we  estimate 
aright  the  claims  either  of  our  own  happiness  or  of  the 
happiness  of  others.  Mill's  statement  is  the  most  ade- 
quate on  this  important  point. 

"  The  utilitarian  standard,"  he  says,  is  "  not  the  agent's 
own  greatest  happiness,  but  the  greatest  amount  of  happi- 
ness altogether."  The  end,  thus  conceived,  yields  the  true 
principle  of  the  distribution  of  happiness.  "As  between 
his  own  happiness  and  that  of  others,  utilitarianism  re- 
quires him  to  be  as  strictly  impartial  as  a  disinterested 
and  benevolent  spectator.  In  the  golden  rule  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  we  read  the  complete  spirit  of  the  ethics  of 
utility.  To  do  as  one  would  be  done  by,  and  to  love 
one's  neighbour  as  oneself,  constitute  the  ideal  perfection 
of  utilitarian  morality."  Bentham  had  already  enunciated 
this  principle  in  the  formula  :  "  Each  to  count  for  one,  and 
no  one  for  more  than  one."  But  a  new  question  is  thus 
raised  for  the  Hedonist — namely,  how  to  reconcile  the 
happiness  of  all  with  the  happiness  of  each,  or  altruism 
with  egoism.  "  Why  am  I  bound  to  promote  the  general 
happiness  ?  If  my  own  happiness  lies  in  something  else, 
why  may  I  not  give  that  the  preference  ? "  Mill  answers 
that  there  are  two  kinds  of  sanction  for  altruistic  con- 
duct, external  and  internal.  Both  had  been  recognised  by 
his  predecessors.  Bentham  mentions  four  sanctions,  all 
external — viz.,  the  physical,  the  political,  the  moral  or 
popular,  and  the  religious.  All  four  are  forces  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  individual  from  without;  and  their 
common  object  is  to  produce  an  identity,  or  at  least  a 
community,  of  interest  between  the  individual  and  society, 
in  such  wise  that  he  shall  '  find  his  account '  in  living 
conformably  to  the  claims  of  the  general  happiness.  But 
such  external  sanctions,  alone,  would  provide  only  a 
secondary  and  indirect  vindication  for  altruistic  conduct. 
The  individual  whose  life  was  governed  by  such  con- 

G 


98 

straints,  would  still  be,  in  character  and  inner  motive, 
if  not  in  outward  act,  an  egoist :  his  end  would  still  be 
egoistic,  though  it  was  accomplished  by  altruistic  means. 
To  the  external  sanctions  must,  therefore,  be  added  the 
internal  sanction  which  Hume  and  Mill  alike  describe 
as  a  "  feeling  for  the  happiness  of  mankind,"  a  "  basis  of 
powerful  natural  sentiment  for  utilitarian  morality,"  a 
feeling  of  "  regard  to  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  others," 
which,  if  not  "  innate  "  or  fully  developed  from  the  first, 
is  none  the  less  "  natural."  "  This  firm  foundation  is  that 
of  the  social  feelings  of  mankind;  the  desire  to  be  in 
unity  with  our  fellow  -  creatures,  which  is  already  a 
powerful  principle  in  human  nature,  and  happily  one 
of  those  which  tend  to  become  stronger,  even  with- 
out express  inculcation  from  the  influences  of  advancing 
civilisation." 

(3)  The  third  characteristic  feature  of  modern  Hedonism, 
as  contrasted  with  ancient,  is  the  new  interpretation  which 
it  offers  of  the  gradation  of  pleasures.  It  is  Mill's  chief 
innovation  that  he  introduces  a  distinction  of  quality,  in 
addition  to  the  old  distinction  of  quantity.  The  end  thus 
receives,  in  addition  to  its  new  extension,  a  new  refine- 
ment. The  Epicureans  had  emphasised  the  distinction 
between  the  pleasures  of  the  body  and  those  of  the  mind, 
and  had  unhesitatingly  awarded  the  superiority  to  the 
latter,  on  the  ground  of  their  greater  durability  and  their 
comparative  freedom  from  painful  consequences  ;  but  they 
had  not  maintained  the  intrinsic  preferableness  of  the 
mental  pleasures.  To  Paley  and  Bentham,  as  well  as  to 
the  Epicureans,  all  pleasures  are  still  essentially,  or  in 
kind,  the  same.  "  I  hold,"  says  Paley,  "  that  pleasures 
differ  in  nothing,  but  in  continuance  and  intensity." ] 
Bentham  holds  that,  besides  intensity  and  duration,  the 
elements  of  '  certainty/  '  propinquity,'  '  fecundity '  (the 
likelihood  of  their  being  followed  by  other  pleasures), 
and  '  purity '  (the  unlikelihood  of  their  being  followed  by 

1  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,  bk.  i.  ch.  vi. 


Hedonism  99 

pain),  must  enter  as  elements  into  the  'hedonistic  cal- 
culus.' 1  Such  were  the  interpretations  of  the  distinction 
prior  to  Mill :  the  distinction  was  emphasised,  but  it  was 
explained  in  the  end  as  a  distinction  of  quantity,  not  of 
quality.  Mill  holds  that  the  distinction  of  quality  is 
independent  of  that  of  quantity,  and  that  the  qualitative 
distinction  is  as  real  and  legitimate  as  the  quantitative. 
"  There  is  no  known  Epicurean  theory  of  life  which  does 
not  assign  to  the  pleasures  of  the  intellect,  of  the  feelings 
and  imagination,  and  of  the  moral  sentiments,  a  much 
higher  value  as  pleasures  than  to  those  of  mere  sensation. 
It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  utilitarian  writers  in 
general  have  placed  the  superiority  of  mental  over  bodily 
pleasures  chiefly  in  the  greater  permanence,  safety,  cost- 
liness, etc.,  of  the  former — that  is,  in  their  circumstan- 
tial advantages  rather  than  in  their  intrinsic  nature.  And 
on  all  these  points  utilitarians  have  fully  proved  their 
case ;  but  they  might  have  taken  the  other,  and,  as  it 
may  be  called,  higher  ground,  with  entire  consistency. 
It  is  quite  compatible  with  the  principle  of  utility  to 
recognise  the  fact  that  some  kinds  of  pleasure  axe 
more  desirable  and  more  valuable  than  others.  It  would 
be  absurd  that  while,  in  estimating  all  other  things, 
quality  is  considered  as  well  as  quantity,  the  estimation 
of  pleasure  should  be  supposed  to  depend  on  quantity 
alone."  2 

As  to  the  criterion  of  quality  in  pleasures,  or  "  what 
makes  one  pleasure  more  valuable  than  another,  merely 
as  a  pleasure,  except  its  being  greater  in  amount,  there 
is  but  one  possible  answer."  That  answer  is  the  one 
which  Plato  gave  long  ago,  the  answer  of  the  widest  and 
most  competent  experience.  "  Of  two  pleasures,  if  there 
be  one  to  which  all  or  almost  all  who  have  experience  of 
both,  give  a  decided  preference,  irrespective  of  any  feel- 

1  Bentham  adds  '  extent,'  or  "  the  number  of  persons  to  whom  it  ex- 
tends. " — Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  iv.  §  4. 
-  Utilitarianism,  ch.  ii. 


100  The  Moral  Ideal 

ing  of  moral  obligation  to  prefer  it,  that  is  the  more 
desirable  pleasure.  If  one  of  the  two  is,  by  those  who 
are  competently  acquainted  with  both,  placed  so  far  above 
the  other  that  they  prefer  it,  even  though  knowing  it  to 
be  attended  with  a  greater  amount  of  discontent,  and  would 
not  resign  it  for  any  amount  of  the  other  pleasure  which 
their  nature  is  capable  of,  we  are  justified  in  ascribing  to 
the  preferred  enjoyment  a  superiority  in  quality,  so  far 
outweighing  quantity  as  to  render  it,  in  comparison,  of 
small  account.  Now  it  is  an  unquestionable  fact  that  those 
who  are  equally  acquainted  with,  and  equally  capable  of 
appreciating  and  enjoying  both,  do  give  a  most  marked 
preference  to  the  manner  of  existence  which  employs  their 
higher  faculties.  Few  human  creatures  would  consent  to 
be  changed  into  any  of  the  lower  animals  for  a  promise 
of  the  fullest  allowance  of  a  beast's  pleasures;  no  in- 
telligent human  being  would  consent  to  be  a  fool,  no 
instructed  person  would  be  an  ignoramus,  no  person  of 
feeling  and  conscience  would  be  selfish  and  base,  even 
though  they  should  be  persuaded  that  the  fool,  or  the 
dunce,  or  the  rascal  is  better  satisfied  with  his  lot  than 
they  are  with  theirs.  They  would  not  resign  what  they 
possess  more  than  he,  for  the  most  complete  satisfaction 
of  all  the  desires  which  they  have  in  common  with  him. 
.  .  .  We  may  give  what  explanation  we  please  of  this 
unwillingness.  .  .  .  but  its  most  appropriate  appellation 
is  a  sense  of  dignity,  which  all  human  beings  possess  in 
one  form  or  other,  and  in  some,  though  by  no  means  in 
exact,  proportion  to  their  higher  faculties,  and  which  is 
so  essential  a  part  of  the  happiness  of  those  in  whom 
it  is  strong,  that  nothing  which  conflicts  with  it  could 
be,  otherwise  than  momentarily,  an  object  of  desire  to 
them." 1  This  higher  nature,  with  its  higher  demand 
of  happiness,  carries  with  it  inevitably  a  certain  discon- 
tent. Yet  "  it  is  better  to  be  a  human  being  dissatisfied 
than  a  pig  satisfied ;  better  to  be  Socrates  dissatisfied 

1  Mill,  Utilitarianism,  ch.  ii. 


Hedonism  101 

than  a  fool  satisfied.  And  if  the  fool  or  the  pig  is  of  a 
different  opinion,  it  is  because  they  only  know  their  own 
side  of  the  question.  The  other  party  to  the  comparison 
knows  both  sides."1 

4.  (c)  Evolutional  Utilitarianism. — Not  the  least 
important  modern  modification  of  the  hedonistic  theory 
is  its  affiliation  to  an  evolutionary  view  of  morality. 
The  current  form  of  Hedonism  is  Evolutional  Utilitarian- 
ism. The  reform  in  ethical  method  which  the  evolu- 
tionary moralists  seek  to  introduce  ,  is,  in  words,  the 
same  as  Kant's  reform  of  metaphysics,  namely,  to  make 
it  '  scientific.'  Apply  the  principle  of  evolution  to  the 
phenomena  of  moral  life,  as  it  has  already  been  ap- 
plied to  the  phenomena  of  physical  life,  and  the  former, 
equally  with  the  latter,  will  fall  into  order  and  system. 
Morality,  like  nature,  has  evolved ;  and  neither  can  be 
understood  except  in  the  light  of  its  evolution.  Nay, 
the  evolution  of  morality  is  part  and  parcel  of  the 
general  evolution  of  nature,  its  crown  and  climax  indeed, 
but  of  the  same  warp  and  woof.  In  the  successful  ap- 
plication of  his  theory  to  moral  life,  therefore,  the  Evolu- 
tionist sees  the  satisfaction  of  his  highest  ambition ;  for 
it  is  here  that  the  critical  point  is  reached  which  shall 
decide  whether  or  not  his  conception  is  potent  to  reduce 
all  knowledge  to  unity.  If  morality  offers  no  resistance 
to  its  application,  its  adequacy  is  once  for  all  completely 
vindicated.  Thus  we  are  offered  by  the  Evolutionists 
what  Green  called  a  '  natural  science  of  morals ' :  the 
ethical  process  is  resolved  into  the  cosmical  process. 

According  to  Mr  Spencer,  morality  is  "  that  form 
which  universal  conduct  assumes  during  the  last  stages 
of  its  evolution."  Conduct  is  "  the  adjustment  of  acts 
to  ends,"  and  in  the  growing  complexity  and  complete- 
ness of  this  adjustment  consists  its  evolution.  Things 
and  actions  are  "  good  or  bad  according  as  they  are  well 

1  Mill,  loc.  cit. 


102  The  Moral  Ideal 

or  ill  adapted  to  achieve  prescribed  ends,"  or  "  according 
as  the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends  are  or  are  not 
efficient."  And,  ultimately,  their  goodness  or  badness 
is  determined  by  the  measure  in  which  all  minor  ends 
are  merged  in  the  grand  end  of  self  and  race-preserva- 
tion. Thus  "  the  ideal  goal  to  the  natural  evolution  of 
conduct "  is  at  the  same  time  "  the  ideal  standard  of 
conduct  ethically  considered."  The  universal  end  of 
conduct,  therefore,  is  life — its  preservation  and  develop- 
ment. But  "  in  calling  good  the  conduct  which  subserves 
life,  and  bad  the  conduct  which  hinders  or  destroys  it, 
and  in  so  implying  that  life  is  a  blessing  and  not  a  curse, 
we  are  inevitably  asserting  that  conduct  is  good  or  bad 
according  as  its  total  effects  are  pleasurable  or  painful." 

Looking  at  the  inner  side  of  morality,  and  seeking  to 
trace  "  the  genesis  of  the  moral  consciousness,"  Mr  Spencer 
finds  its  "  essential  trait "  to  be  "  the  control  of  some  feel- 
ing or  feelings  by  some  other  feeling  or  feelings  " ;  and 
"  the  general  truth  disclosed  by  the  study  of  evolving 
conduct,  sub-human  and  human,"  is  that  "  for  the  better 
preservation  of  life,  the  primitive,  simple,  presentative 
feelings  must  be  controlled  by  the  later-evolved,  com- 
pound, and  representative  feelings."  Mr  Spencer  mentions 
three  controls  of  this  kind — the  political,  the  religious, 
and  the  social.  These  do  not,  however,  severally  or 
together,  "  constitute  the  moral  control,  but  are  only 
preparatory  to  it — are  controls  within  which  the  moral 
control  evolves."  "  The  restraints  properly  distinguished 
as  moral  are  unlike  those  restraints  out  of  which  they 
evolve,  and  with  which  they  are  long  confounded,  in  this 
— they  refer  not  to  the  extrinsic  effects  of  actions,  but 
to  their  intrinsic  effects.  The  truly  moral  deterrent  is 
.  .  .  constituted  ...  by  a  representation  of  the  neces- 
sary natural  results."  Thus  arises  "  the  feeling  of  moral 
obligation,"  "  the  sentiment  of  duty."  "  It  is  an  abstract 
sentiment  generated  in  a  manner  analogous  to  that  in 
which  abstract  ideas  are  generated."  On  reflection,  we 


Hedonism  103 

observe  that  the  common  characteristic  of  the  feelings 
which  prompt  to  '  good '  conduct  is  that  "  they  are  all 
complex,  re -representative  feelings,  occupied  with  the 
future  rather  than  the  present.  The  idea  of  authorita- 
tiveness  has,  therefore,  come  to  be  connected  with  feelings 
having  these  traits." 

There  is,  however,  another  element  in  the  "abstract 
consciousness  of  duty" — viz.,  "the  element  of  coercive- 
ness."  This  Mr  Spencer  derives  from  the  various  forms 
of  pre-moral  restraint  just  mentioned.  But,  since  the 
constant  tendency  of  conduct  is  to  free  itself  from 
these  restraints,  and  to  become  self-dependent  and  truly 
moral,  "  the  sense  of  duty  or  moral  obligation  \i.  e.t  as 
coercive]  is  transitory,  and  will  diminish  as  fast  as 
moralisation  increases.  .  .  .  While  at  h'rst  the  motive 
contains  an  element  of  coercion,  at  last  this  element  of 
coercion  dies  out,  and  the  act  is  performed  without  any 
consciousness  of  being  obliged  to  perform  it."  Thus  "  the 
doing  of  work,  originally  under  the  consciousness  that  it 
ought  to  be  done,  may  eventually  cease  to  have  any  such 
accompanying  consciousness,"  and  the  right  action  will 
be  done  "  with  a  simple  feeling  of  satisfaction  in  doing 
it."  Since  the  consciousness  of  obligation  arises  from 
the  incomplete  adaptation  of  the  individual  to  the  social 
conditions  of  his  life,  "  with  complete  adaptation  to  the 
social  state,  that  element  in  the  moral  consciousness 
which  is  expressed  by  the  word  obligation  will  disappear. 
The  higher  actions  required  for  the  harmonious  carrying 
on  of  life  will  be  as  much  matters  of  course  as  are  those 
lower  actions  which  the  simple  desires  prompt.  In  their 
proper  times  and  places  and  proportions,  the  moral  senti- 
ments will  guide  men  just  as  spontaneously  and  ade- 
quately as  now  do  the  sensations."  * 

For  the  conflict  between  the  interests  of  society  and 
those  of  the  individual,  which  is  the  source  of  the  feeling 
of  obligation  as  coercive,  is  not  absolute  and  permanent. 

1  Principles  of  Ethics,  vol.  i.  pp.  127-129. 


104  The  Moral  Ideal 

A  "  conciliation  "  of  these  interests  is  possible.  Egoism 
and  altruism  both  have  their  rights.  When  we  study 
the  history  of  evolving  life,  we  find  that  "  self-sacrifice 
is  no  less  primordial  than  self-preservation,"  and  that, 
throughout,  "  altruism  has  been  evolving  simultaneously 
with  egoism."  "  From  the  dawn  of  life  egoism  has  been 
dependent  upon  altruism,  as  altruism  has  been  dependent 
upon  egoism ;  and  in  the  course  of  evolution  the  recip- 
rocal services  of  the  two  have  been  increasing."  Thus 
"pure  egoism  and  pure  altruism  are  both  illegitimate"; 
and  "in  the  progressing  ideas  and  usages  of  mankind 
a  compromise  between  egoism  and  altruism  has  been 
slowly  establishing  itself."  Nay,  a  "  conciliation  has  been, 
and  is,  taking  place  between  the  interests  of  each  citizen 
and  the  interests  of  citizens  at  large ;  tending  ever  to- 
wards a  state  in  which  the  two  become  merged  in  one, 
and  in  which  the  feelings  answering  to  them  respectively 
fall  into  complete  concord."  Thus  "  altruism  of  a  social 
kind  .  .  .  may  be  expected  to  attain  a  level  at  which  it 
will  be  like  parental  altruism  in  spontaneity — a  level 
such  that  ministration  to  others'  happiness  will  become 
a  daily  need."  This  consummation  will  be  brought  about 
by  the  same  agency  which  has  effected  the  present  partial 
conciliation,  namely,  sympathy,  "  which  must  advance  as 
fast  as  conditions  permit."  During  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  evolution  sympathy  is  largely  painful,  on  account 
of  the  existence  of  "  much  non- adaptation  and  much 
consequent  unhappiness."  "  Gradually,  then,  and  only 
gradually,  as  these  various  causes  of  unhappiness  become 
less,  can  sympathy  become  greater.  .  .  .  But  as  the 
moulding  and  remoulding  of  man  and  society  into  mutual 
fitness  progresses,  and  as  the  pains  caused  by  unfitness 
decrease,  sympathy  can  increase  in  presence  of  the  plea- 
sures that  come  from  fitness.  The  two  changes  are, 
indeed,  so  related  that  each  furthers  the  other."  And 
the  goal  of  evolution  can  only  be  perfect  identity  of 
interests,  and  the  consciousness  of  that  identity. 


Hedonism  105 

One  favourite  conception  of  the  evolutionary  school  is 
not  found  in  Mr  Spencer's  statement  of  the  theory,  that  of 
the  '  social  organism.'  Mr  Leslie  Stephen  has  used  this 
idea  with  special  skill  in  his  Science  of  Ethics.  Scien- 
tific utilitarianism,  he  insists,  must  rest  upon  a  deeper 
view  of  society  and  of  its  relation  to  the  individual. 
The  old  utilitarianism  conceived  society  as  a  mere  aggre- 
gate of  individuals.  The  utilitarian  was  still  an  in- 
dividualist ;  though  he  spoke  of  '  the  greatest  number ' 
of  individuals,  the  individual  was  still  his  unit.  Now, 
according  to  Mr  Stephen,  the  true  unit  is  not  the  in- 
dividual, but  society,  which  is  not  a  mere  aggregate  of 
individuals,  but  an  organism,  of  which  the  individual  is 
a  member.  "  Society  may  be  regarded  as  an  organism, 
implying  ...  a  social  tissue,  modified  in  various  ways 
so  as  to  form  the  organs  adapted  to  various  specific  pur- 
poses." Further,  the  social  organism  and  the  underlying 
social  tissue  are  to  be  regarded  as  evolving.  The  social 
tissue  is  being  gradually  modified  so  as  to  form  organs 
ever  more  perfectly  adapted  to  fulfil  the  various  functions 
of  the  organism  as  a  whole ;  and  the  goal  of  the  move- 
ment is  the  evolution  of  the  social  "  type  " — that  is,  of 
that  form  of  society  which  represents  maximum  efficiency 
of  the  given  means  to  the  given  end  of  social  life.  In 
short,  we  may  say  that  the  problem  which  is  receiving 
its  gradual  solution  in  the  evolution  of  society  is  the 
production  of  a  "  social  tissue,"  or  fundamental  structure, 
the  most  "  vitally  efficient" 

In  describing  the  ethical  end,  therefore,  we  must  sub- 
stitute for  "  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number  " 
of  individuals,  the  "  health  "  of  the  social  organism,  or, 
still  more  accurately,  of  the  social  tissue.  The  true  util- 
ity is  not  the  external  utility  of  consequences.  Life  is 
not  "  a  series  of  detached  acts,  in  each  of  which  a  man  can 
calculate  the  sum  of  happiness  or  misery  attainable  by 
different  courses."  It  is  an  organic  growth  ;  and  the  re- 
sults of  any  given  action  are  fully  appreciated,  only  when 


106  Ttie  Moral  Ideal 

the  action  is  regarded,  not  as  affecting  its  temporary 
'state,'  but  as  entering  into  and  modifying  the  very 
substance  of  its  fundamental  structure.  The  scientific 
criterion,  therefore,  is  not  happiness,  but  health.  "  We 
obtain  unity  of  principle  when  we  consider,  not  the  vari- 
ous external  relations,  but  the  internal  condition  of  the 
organism.  .  .  .  We  only  get  a  tenable  and  simple  law 
when  we  start  from  the  structure,  which  is  itself  a  unit." 
ISTor  are  the  two  criteria — health  and  happiness — "  really 
divergent ;  on  the  contrary,  they  necessarily  tend  to  co- 
incide." The  general  correlation  of  the  painful  and  the 
pernicious,  the  pleasurable  and  the  beneficial,  is  obvious. 
"  The  '  useful,'  in  the  sense  of  pleasure-giving,  must  ap- 
proximately coincide  with  the  '  useful '  in  the  sense  of 
life-preserving.  .  .  .  We  must  suppose  that  pain  and 
pleasure  are  the  correlatives  of  certain  states  which  may 
be  roughly  regarded  as  the  smooth  and  the  distracted 
working  of  the  physical  machinery,  and  that,  given  those 
states,  the  sensations  must  always  be  present."  And  in 
the  evolution  of  society  we  can  trace  the  gradual  approxi- 
mation to  coincidence  of  these  two  senses  of  utility. 

Objectively  considered,  then,  moral  laws  may  be  iden- 
tified with  the  conditions  of  social  vitality,  and  morality 
may  be  called  "  the  sum  of  the  preservative  instincts  of 
a  society."  That  these  laws  should  be  perceived  with 
increasing  clearness  as  the  evolution  proceeds,  is  a  cor- 
ollary of  the  theory  of  evolution ;  as  the  social  type  is 
gradually  elaborated,  the  conditions  of  its  realisation  will 
be  more  clearly  perceived.  Thus  we  reach  the  true 
interpretation  of  the  subjective  side  of  morality.  Cor- 
responding to  social  welfare  or  health,  the  objective  end, 
there  is,  in  the  member  of  society,  a  social  instinct,  or 
sympathy  with  that  welfare  or  health.  This,  it  is  in- 
sisted, is  the  true  account  of  conscience.  "  Moral  approval 
is  the  name  of  the  sentiment  developed  through  the  social 
medium,  which  modifies  a  man's  character  in  such  a  way 
as  to  fit  him  to  be  an  efficient  member  of  the  social 


Hedonism  107 

tissue.  It  is  the  spiritual  pressure  which  generates  and 
maintains  morality,"  the  representative  and  spokesman 
of  morality  in  the  individual  consciousness.  "  The  con- 
science is  the  utterance  of  the  public  spirit  of  the  race, 
ordering  us  to  fulfil  the  primary  conditions  of  its  welfare." 
The  old  opposition  between  the  individual  and  society  is 
fundamentally  erroneous,  depending  as  it  does  upon  the 
inadequate  mechanical  conception  of  society  already  re- 
ferred to.  "  The  difference  between  the  sympathetic  and 
the  non-sympathetic  feelings  is  a  difference  in  their  law 
or  in  the  fundamental  axiom  which  they  embody."  "  The 
sympathetic  being  becomes,  in  virtue  of  his  sympathies,  a 
constituent  part  of  a  larger  organisation.  He  is  no  more 
intelligible  by  himself  alone  than  the  limb  is  in  all  its 
properties  intelligible  without  reference  to  the  body." 
Just  as  "  we  can  only  obtain  the  law  of  the  action  of 
the  several  limbs "  when  we  take  the  whole  body  into 
account,  so  with  the  feelings  of  "the  being  who  has 
become  part  of  the  social  organism.  .  .  .  Though  feelings 
of  the  individual,  their  law  can  only  be  determined  by 
reference  to  the  general  social  conditions."  As  a  member 
of  society,  and  not  a  mere  individual,  man  cannot  but 
be  sympathetic.  The  growth  of  society  implies,  as  its 
correlate,  the  growth  of  a  certain  body  of  sentiment  in  its 
members  ;  and,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  Natural 
Selection,  this  instinct,  as  pre-eminently  useful  to  the 
social  organism,  will  be  developed — at  once  extended  and 
enlightened.  "  Every  extension  of  reasoning  power  im- 
plies a  wider  and  closer  identification  of  self  with  others, 
and  therefore  a  greater  tendency  to  merge  the  prudential 
in  the  social  axiom  as  a  first  principle  of  conduct." 
Thus  what  is  generated  in  the  course  of  evolution  is  not 
merely  a  type  of  conduct,  but  a  type  of  character;  not 
merely  altruistic  conduct,  but  "  the  elaboration  and  reg- 
ulation of  the  sympathetic  character  which  takes  place 
through  the  social  factor."  We  can  trace  the  gradual 
progress  from  the  external  to  the  internal  form  of  mor- 


108  The  Moral  Ideal 

ality,  from  the  law  '  Do  this,'  to  the  law  '  Be  this.' 
We  see  how  approval  of  a  certain  type  of  conduct 
develops  into  "approval  of  a  certain  type  of  character, 
the  existence  of  which  fits  the  individual  for  member- 
ship of  a  thoroughly  efficient  and  healthy  social  tissue." 

5.  (d)  Rational  Utilitarianism. — Hedonism  is  the 
Ethics  of  Sensibility,  and  we  have  traced  how  thinker 
after  thinker  of  this  school,  each  availing  himself  of  the 
new  insight  unavailable  to  his  predecessors,  has  striven 
to  solve  the  ethical  problem  in  terms  of  feeling ;  to  in- 
terpret the  good,  whether  our  own  or  that  of  others,  as, 
in  the  last  analysis,  a  sentient  rather  than  a  rational  or 
intellectual  good.  In  particular,  we  have  watched  the 
gradual  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the 
good  of  the  individual  to  the  good  of  others,  the  problem 
of  egoism  and  altruism.  We  have  seen  Mill  reconciling 
these  two  goods,  or  rather  resolving  them  into  one,  through 
the  '  feeling  of  unity  with  our  fellow-men,'  a  sympathy 
which  identifies  their  good  with  our  own,  and  which  all 
the  influences  of  advancing  civilisation  and  moral  educa- 
tion are  tending  to  foster  and  develop.  We  have  seen 
the  Evolutionists  relying  upon  the  same  agency  of  sym- 
pathetic feeling  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  desired 
reconciliation,  and  invoking  the  law  of  evolution  and  the 
conception  of  the  social  organism  in  behalf  of  their  pre- 
diction of  an  ultimate  harmony  of  the  interests  of  all 
with  the  interests  of  each.  Now  Professor  Sidgwick, 
coming  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  as  it  is  thus 
handed  to  him,  or  rather  as  it  is  handed  to  him  by  Mill 
(for  he  does  not  take  any  apparent  interest  in  the  evolu- 
tionary solution  of  it),  concludes  that,  as  a  problem  of 
mere  feeling,  it  is  insoluble,  and  that  the  only  possible 
solution  of  it  is  a  rational  solution.  His  endeavour, 
therefore,  is  to  establish  the  rationality  of  Utilitarianism, 
and  thus  to  provide  its  needed  'proof.'  That  proof  is 
not,  as  Mill  held,  psychological,  but  logical ;  and  he  sets 


Hedonism  109 

himself,  as  he  says,  to  discover  "  the  rational  basis  that  I 
had  loiig  perceived  to  be  wanting  to  the  Utilitarianism  of 
Bentham  [and  of  Mill]  regarded  as  an  ethical  doctrine." 
The  resulting  theory  he  calls  '  rational  Utilitarianism.' 

Agreeing  with  the  hedonistic  interpetation  of  the  end 
as  a  sentient  good  or  a  good  of  feeling,  Mr  Sidgwick 
linds  it  necessary  to  appeal  to  reason  for  the  regulative 
principles — the  principles  of  the  distribution  of  this  good. 
(1)  Without  passing  beyond  the  circle  of  the  individual 
life,  we  find  it  necessary  to  employ  a  rational  principle 
in  the  choice  of  sentient  satisfaction.  The  bridge  on 
which  we  pass  from  pure  to  modified  Hedonism,  from 
Cyrenaicism  to  Epicureanism,  from  the  irresponsible  en- 
joyment of  the  moment  to  a  well-planned  and  successful 
life  of  pleasure,  from  pleasure  to  happiness,  is  a  bridge  of 
reason,  not  of  feeling.  To  feeling,  the  present  moment's 
claim  to  satisfaction  is  paramount — its  claim  is  felt  more 
imperatively  than  that  of  any  other ;  it  is  to  the  eye  of 
thought  alone  that  the  true  perspective  of  the  moments 
and  of  their  capacities  of  pleasure  is  revealed.  When  we 
reflect  or  think,  we  see  that  the  good  is  not  a  thing  of  the 
passing  moments,  but  of  the  total  life ;  reason  carries  us, 
as  feeling  never  could,  past  a  regard  for  our  "  momentary 
good  "  to  a  regard  for  our  "  good  on  the  whole."  Feeling 
needs  the  instruction  of  reason — our  self-love  has  to 
become  a  rational,  as  distinguished  from  a  merely  sentient 
love  of  self.  Eeason  dictates  an  "  impartial  concern  for 
all  parts  of  our  conscious  life,"  an  equal  regard  for  the 
rights  of  all  the  moments,  the  future  as  well  as  the 
present,  the  remote  as  well  as  the  near ;  teaches  short- 
sighted feeling,  with  its  eye  filled  with  the  present,  that 
"  Hereafter  is  to  be  regarded  as  much  as  Now,"  and  that 
"  a  smaller  present  good  is  not  to  be  preferred  to  a  greater 
future  good."  When  the  Good  is  enjoyed — now  or  then, 
to-morrow  or  next  year — is,  or  may  be,  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference to  reason,  while  to  feeling  it  is  almost  everything ; 
it  is  for  reason  to  educate  feeling,  until  feeling  shares  her 


110  The  Moral  Ideal 

own  perspective.     This  rational  principle  which  guides  us 
in  the  distribution  of  our  own  good  is  Prudence. 

But  (2)  the  path  of  Prudence  is  not  itself  alone  the 
path  of  virtue.  Even  our  own  "  good  on  the  whole  "  is 
not,  ipso  facto,  the  same  as  the  general  good.  Whence 
shall  we  derive  the  principle  of  the  distribution  of  good 
when  the  good  is  the  good  of  all,  and  not  merely  that  of 
the  individual  ?  How  construct  the  bridge  that  will  span 
the  interval  between  our  own  good  and  that  of  others, 
and  correlate  altruistic  with  egoistic  conduct  ?  For,  once 
more,  mere  feeling  does  not  constitute  the  bridge  between 
egoism  and  altruism.  The  dualism  of  prudence  and 
virtue,  regard  for  our  own  good  and  regard  for  the  good 
of  others  or  the  general  good,  remains  for  feeling  irre- 
solvable. Society  never  entirely  annexes  the  individual ; 
his  good  never  absolutely  coincides,  in  the  sphere  of  sensi- 
bility, with  its  good.  But  reason  solves  the  problem  which 
is  for  feeling  insoluble.  The  true  proof  of  Utilitarianism 
or  altruistic  Hedonism  is  not  psychological,  but  logical. 
When  "  the  egoist  offers  the  proposition  that  his  happi- 
ness or  pleasure  is  good,  not  only  for  him,  but  absolutely, 
he  gives  the  ground  needed  for  such  a  proof.  For  we 
can  then  point  out  to  him,  as  a  rational,  if  not  as  a 
sentient  being,  that  his  happiness  cannot  be  a  more 
important  part  of  good,  taken  universally,  than  the 
equal  happiness  of  any  other  person.  And  thus,  start- 
ing with  his  own  principle,  he  must  accept  the  wider 
notion  of  universal  happiness  or  pleasure,  as  representing 
the  real  end  of  reason,  the  absolutely  good  or  desirable." 
To  feeling  it  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world,  whether 
it  is  my  own  happiness  or  that  of  some  one  else  that  is 
in  question ;  to  reason  this  distinction  also  is,  like  the 
distinction  of  time,  a  matter  of  indifference.  As,  to  the 
eye  of  reason,  there  is  no  distinction  between  the  near 
and  the  remote,  but  every  moment  of  the  individual  life 
has  its  equal  right  to  satisfaction,  so  is  there  no  distinc- 
tion between  meum  and  tuum,  but  each  individual,  as 


Hedonism  111 

equally  a  sentient  being,  has  an  equal  right  to  consider- 
ation. "  Here  again,  just  as  in  the  former  case,  by  con- 
sidering the  relation  of  the  integrant  parts  to  the  whole 
and  to  each  other,  we  may  obtain  the  self-evident  prin- 
ciple that  the  good  of  any  individual  is  of  no  more 
importance,  as  a  part  of  universal  good,  than  the  good 
of  any  other ;  unless,  that  is,  there  are  special  grounds 
for  believing  that  more  good  is  likely  to  be  realised  in 
the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  And  as  rational  beings, 
we  are  manifestly  bound  to  aim  at  good  generally,  not 
merely  at  this  or  that  part  of  it."  That  '  impartiality ' 
which  Bentham  and  Mill  declared  essential  to  utilitarian 
morality,  in  which  '  each  is  to  count  for  one,  and  no  one 
for  more  than  one,'  is  the  impartiality  of  reason,  to 
which  mere  feeling  could  never  attain.  This  rational 
principle,  which  alone  can  guide  us  in  the  distribution 
of  happiness  between  ourselves  and  others,  is  "the 
abstract  principle  of  the  duty  of  Benevolence."  To 
Prudence  must  be  added  Benevolence. 

And  (3)  in  order  to  a  perfectly  rational  distribution 
of  happiness,  whether  among  the  competing  moments  of 
the  individual  life  or  among  competing  individuals,  yet 
a  third  principle  of  reason  must  be  invoked.  Whether 
we  are  considering  the  sum-total  of  our  own  happiness 
or  of  the  general  happiness,  we  find  that  the  constituent 
parts  have  not  all  an  equal  importance.  Some  moments 
in  the  individual  life  are  more  important  than  others, 
because  they  have  a  larger  or  a  peculiar  capacity  for 
pleasure ;  and  some  individuals  are  more  important 
than  others,  because  they  too  have  a  larger  or  a  peculiar 
capacity  for  pleasure.  Neither  in  the  individual  nor  in 
the  social  sphere  is  there  a  dead  level  of  absolute  equality  ; 
there  are  rational  grounds  for  recognising  inequality  in 
both.  Accordingly,  if  the  maximum  of  happiness  is  to 
be  realised,  the  strict  literal  '  impartiality '  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  Prudence  and  Benevolence  must  be  enlightened 
by  the  better  insight  of  a  higher  Justice  which,  with  its 


112  The  Moral  Ideal 

yet  stricter  scrutiny  and  more  perfect  impartiality,  shall 
recognise  the  true  claim  and  the  varying  importance  of 
each  moment  and  of  each  individual.  It  is,  indeed,  rather 
a  principle  of  equity  than  of  justice,  a  '  Lesbian  rule ' 
which  adapts  itself  to  the  inequalities  and  variations  of 
that  living  experience  which  it  measures.  As  such,  it  is 
the  true  and  ultimate  economic  principle  of  Hedonism. 
Instead  of  depressing  the  maximum  to  a  rigid  average,  by 
distributing  the  '  greatest  happiness '  equally  among  the 
'greatest  number'  of  moments  or  of  individuals,  the  prin- 
ciple of  Justice  directs  us  to  aim  at  the  greatest  total 
happiness,  or  the  greatest  happiness  '  on  the  whole,' 
whether  in  our  own  experience  or  in  that  of  the  race. 


II. — Critical  Estimate  of  Hedonism. 

6.  (a)  Its  psychological  inadequacy. — The  formal 
merits  of  Hedonism  as  a  scientific  theory  of  morals  are 
of  the  highest  order.  It  is  a  bold  and  skilfully  exe- 
cuted effort  to  satisfy  the  scientific  demand  for  unity. 
It  offers  a  clear  and  definite  conception  of  the  end  of 
life,  a  principle  of  unity  under  which  its  most  diverse 
elements  are  capable  of  being  brought,  and  under  which 
they  receive  at  least  a  very  plausible  interpretation.  It 
connects  duty  with  the  good,  and  sees  in  the  several 
moral  laws  the  means  to  the  realisation  of  one  supreme 
end.  It  acknowledges  the  growth  and  change  which 
have  characterised  the  course  of  moral  theory  and  prac- 
tice ;  it  recognises  the  fact  that  morality  is  an  evolution, 
and  has  a  history ;  and  it  offers  a  rationale  of  this  his- 
tory, a  theory  of  this  evolution.  Nor  does  it  fall  into 
the  fallacy  of  reading  its  own  scientific  theory  into  the 
ordinary  naive  moral  consciousness  of  mankind.  The 
dominating  tendency  of  the  entire  ethical  movement,  it 
insists,  is  utilitarian  and  hedonistic ;  but  this  tendency  is 
present  unconsciously  and  implicitly  more  often  than 


Hedonism  113 

consciously  and  explicitly.  Until  we  reflect,  we  may 
not  realise  that  the  end  which  we  seek  in  all  our  actions 
is  pleasure ;  but  let  us  once  reflect,  and  we  cannot  fail 
to  detect  its  constant  presence  and  operation.  And  when 
we  follow  the  history  of  the  theory,  from  its  ancient  be- 
ginnings in  Cyrenaicism  to  its  classical  development  in 
Epicureanism,  and  from  the  egoism  of  Paley  to  the 
altruism  of  Bentham  and  Mill,  and  the  Evolutionism  of 
Spencer  and  his  school,  we  must  admire  not  only  the 
strenuous  perseverance  with  which  the  old  formula  has 
been  stretched  again  and  again  so  as  to  accommodate 
higher,  and  hitherto  unconsidered,  aspects  of  the  ethical 
problem,  but  also  the  skill  and  open-mindedness,  the 
sense  of  moral  reality,  the  vitality  of  thought,  which 
have  enabled  the  theory  to  adapt  itself  so  readily  and  so 
naturally  to  new  moral  and  intellectual  conditions. 

A  peculiar  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  an  unwarranted 
plausibility  has,  however,  accrued  to  the  theory  from  its 
appropriation  of  the  term  '  happiness '  to  express  its 
conception  of  the  ethical  end.  We  hear  the  theory  as 
often  called  Eudaemonism  as  Hedonism,  the  happiness- 
theory  as  the  pleasure -theory.  It  would  conduce  to 
clearness  of  thought  if  these  terms  were  kept  apart. 
For,  as  Aristotle  says,  we  are  all  agreed  in  describing  the 
end  as  happiness  (tuSeujuovt'a),  but  we  differ  as  to  the 
definition  of  happiness.  Pleasure  (i$ovrj)  is  one  among 
other  interpretations  of  happiness  ;  and,  though  it  may  be 
the  most  usual,  its  justice  and  adequacy  must  be  con- 
sidered and  vindicated,  like  those  of  any  other  interpre- 
tation. Happiness  is,  in  itself,  merely  equivalent  to 
well-being  or  welfare,  and  the  nature  of  this  may  be 
described  in  other  terms,  as  well  as  in  those  of  pleasure. 
Pleasure  is  sentient  welfare,  welfare  of  sensibility;  but 
there  is  also  intellectual  welfare,  and  that  welfare  of  the 
will  or  total  active  self  which  is  rather  well-doing  than 
well-being  (ev  £ijv  KCU  tv  irpaTTiiv).  The  welfare  or  hap- 
piness may  be  that  of  the  sentient,  or  of  the  intellectual, 

H 


114  The  Moral  Ideal 

or  of  the  total  self,  sentient  and  intellectual,  in  action. 
No  doubt,  pleasure,  or  the  happiness  of  the  sentient  self, 
is  the  only  term  we  have  to  describe  the  content  of  hap- 
piness. It  is  also  true  that  all  welfare  has  a  sentient 
side,  or  that  the  good  is  pleasant,  even  though  pleasure 
may  not  be  the  good.  But  to  exclude  the  possibility 
of  any  other  interpretation  by  identifying  happiness  and 
pleasure  at  the  outset,  and  using  these  terms  interchange- 
ably throughout  the  discussion,  is,  it  seems  to  me,  to 
employ  a  '  question-begging  epithet.'  The  thesis,  of  which 
Hedonism  ought  to  be  the  demonstration,  is  that  happi- 
ness, or  the  good,  is  pleasure  or  the  '  sum  of  pleasures.' 
Realising  this  to  be  the  true  state  of  the  argument,  we 
may  now  proceed  to  consider  the  legitimacy  and  adequacy 
of  the  hedonistic  interpretation  of  happiness.  There  need 
be  the  less  hesitation  in  styling  the  theory  in  question 
the  '  pleasure-theory,'  rather  than,  more  vaguely  if  more 
plausibly,  the  '  happiness-theory,'  since  the  Epicureans  of 
old,  almost  as  eagerly  as  Mill  and  his  successors  in  our 
own  time,  have  maintained  the  claims  of  the  term  '  plea- 
sure' to  the  highest  sentient  connotation.  The  real 
question  at  issue,  let  us  understand,  is  the  legitimacy  of 
the  limitation  of  the  conception  of  happiness  or  the  good 
to  the  sentient  sphere. 

Now,  the  fundamental  inadequacy  of  Hedonism,  already 
suggested  in  the  above  remarks,  is  a  psychological  one. 
The  hedonistic  theory  of  life  is  based  upon  a  one-sided 
theory  of  human  nature.  Man  is  regarded  as,  funda- 
mentally and  essentially,  a  sentient  being,  a  creature  of 
sensibility ;  and  therefore  the  end  of  his  life  is  conceived 
in  terms  of  sensibility,  or  as  sentient  satisfaction.  Now, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  sensibility  is  a  large  and  important 
element  in  human  life ;  the  question  is,  whether  it  is  the 
ultimate  and  characteristic  element.  This  question  must, 
I  think,  be  answered  in  the  negative.  We  are  so  con- 
stituted as  to  be  susceptible  to  pleasure  and  pain,  and  we 
might  conceivably  make  this  susceptibility  the  sole  guide 


Hedonism  115 

of  our  life.  That  we  cannot  do  so  consistently  with  our 
nature,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  are  also  so  constituted 
as  to  regulate  our  feelings  by  reference  not  only  to  one 
another,  but  to  the  rational  nature  which  belongs  to  our 
humanity  and  differentiates  us  from  the  animal  creation. 
In  the  animal  life,  pleasure  and  pain  are  the  '  sovereign 
masters ' ;  in  ours,  they  are  subjected  to  the  higher  sov- 
ereignty of  reason.  "  If  pleasure  is  the  sovereign  good,  it 
ought  to  satisfy  absolutely  all  our  faculties ;  not  only  our 
sensibility,  but  also  our  intelligence  and  will."  Or  rather, 
it  must  satisfy  the  nature  which  these  faculties,  in  their 
unity  and  totality,  constitute,  and  must  satisfy  that  nature 
in  its  unity  and  totality.  But  pleasure,  or  sentient  satis- 
faction, is  not  a  category  adequate  to  the  interpretation  of 
the  life  of  such  a  being  as  man.  The  hedonistic  theory  of 
life  purchases  its  simplicity  and  lucidity  at  the  expense  of 
depth  and  comprehensiveness  of  view.  Its  formula  is  too 
simple.  Its  end  is  abstract  and  one-sided,  the  exponent 
of  the  life  of  feeling  merely ;  the  true  end  must  be  the 
exponent  of  the  rational,  as  well  as  of  the  sentient  self. 
It  may  be  difficult  to  describe  such  an  end ;  but  the  dif- 
ficulty of  the  ethical  task  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
complexity  of  man's  nature.  The  very  clearness  and 
simplicity  of  Hedonism  is,  in  this  sense,  its  condemnation. 
It  is  doubtless  pleasing  to  the  logical  sense  to  see  the 
whole  of  our  complex  human  life  reduced  to  the  simple 
terms  of  sensibility.  But  the  true  principle  of  unity 
must  take  fuller  account  of  the  complexity  of  the  problem  ; 
insight  must  not  be  sacrificed  to  system — the  true  system 
will  be  the  result  of  the  deepest  insight.  Festina  lente  is 
the  watchword  in  ethics  as  in  metaphysics ;  the  true 
thinker,  in  either  sphere,  will  not  make  haste.  And  if 
Plato  was  right  when  he  said  that  the  good  life  is  a 
harmony  Df  diverse  elements,  he  was  also  right  when  he 
said  that  the  key  to  this  harmony  is  to  be  found  rather 
in  reason  than  in  sensibility.  To  a  psychologist  who, 
like  Mill  and  Bain,  or  like  the  ancient  Cyrenaics,  resolves 


116  The  Moral  Ideal 

our  entire  experience  into  feeling  or  sensibility,  such  a 
criticism  would  not,  of  course,  appeal.  He  would  dis- 
allow the  distinction  between  reason  and  sensibility,  and 
maintain  that  the  former  differs  from  the  latter  only  in 
respect  of  its  greater  complexity,  that  reason,  so-called, 
is  but  the  complex  product  of  associated  feelings.  He- 
donism in  ethics  is  the  logical  correlate  of  Sensationalism 
in  psychology.  But,  short  of  such  a  psychological  demon- 
stration, the  Aristotelian  argument  holds,  that  the  end  of 
any  being  must  be  in  accordance  with  its  peculiar  nature  ; 
and,  since  sensibility  assimilates  man  to  the  animals,  and 
reason  differentiates  him  from  them,  his  true  well-being 
must  be  found  in  a  rationally  guided  life,  rather  than  in 
a  life  whose  sole  guide  and  sovereign  master  is  sensibility. 

Hedonism  rests  upon  the  psychological  confusion,  al- 
ready considered,1  between  the  dynamical  and  the  teleo- 
logical  aspects  of  choice.  The  good  choice,  or  the  choice 
of  the  good,  is,  like  all  choices  (including  the  choice  of 
the  bad),  pleasant ;  nay,  it  is  the  most  pleasant  choice. 
In  other  words,  the  good  is  pleasant.  But  it  does  not 
follow  that  it  is  pleasure.  The  question  of  ethics  is  not : 
What  pleases  ?  but,  What  ought  to  please  ?  In  what 
activities  may  I,  as  a  human  being,  rightly  take  pleasure  ? 
Hedonism,  looking  only  at  the  sentient  subject,  fails  to 
reach  the  objective  content  of  the  good.  To  reach  the 
objective  side  of  choice,  it  is  not  necessary  to  deny  that 
pleasure  enters  into  our  choice  of  the  good.  Pleasure  is 
its  inevitable  subjective  side;  to  choose  is  to  find  our 
pleasure  in  that  which  we  choose.  A  pleasureless  or 
passionless  choice  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  But  the 
question  of  the  objective  content  or  the  '  What '  of  choice, 
remains  open  for  discussion,  unprejudiced  by  the  fact  of 
the  pleasantness  of  the  act  of  choice  itself.  The  ethical 
question  is  :  What  is  the  true  or  rightful  place  of  pleasure 
in  choice  ? 

Professor  Sidgwick,  however,  after  denying  that  plea- 

1  Introd.,  ch.  iii.  pp.  70  ff. 


Hedonism  117 

sure  is  the  object  of  choice,  affirms  that  it  is  the  only 
reasonable  ground  of  choice.  His  ethical  Hedonism 
rests  upon  the  denial  of  '  psychological '  Hedonism.  We 
do  not  choose  pleasure ;  our  choice  is  of  objects,  and 
'  terminates '  in  them.  Yet  the  only  rational  vindica- 
tion of  such  objective  choices  is  to  be  found,  he  holds,  in 
the  pleasure  which  the  pursuit  or  attainment  of  the 
object  yields.  The  only  criterion  of  ethical  value  is 
pleasure.  Pleasure  is  the  only  thing  desirable,  though 
it  is  not  the  only  object  of  desire ;  it  is  the  only  thing 
worth  choosing,  though  it  is  not  the  only  thing  chosen.1 
Although  he  is  perfectly  aware  of  the  objective  as  well  as 
of  the  subjective  side  of  choice,  he  maintains  that  the 
objective  side  has  no  value  in  itself,  but  only  in  relation 
to  the  subjective ;  that  the  value  of  objects  consists  in 
their  '  felicific  '  possibilities.  "  Admitting  that  we  have 
actual  experience  of  such  preferences  as  have  just  been 
described,  of  which  the  ultimate  object  is  something  that 
is  not  merely  consciousness,  it  still  seems  to  me  that 
when  ...  we  'sit  down  in  a  calm  moment,'  we  can 
only  justify  to  ourselves  the  importance  that  we  attach 
to  any  of  these  objects  by  considering  its  conduciveness, 
in  one  way  or  another,  to  the  happiness  of  conscious  (or 
sentient)  beings."  2  It  is  true  that  "  several  cultivated 
people  do  habitually  judge  that  knowledge,  art,  etc.,  are 
ends  independently  of  the  pleasure  derived  from  them." 
Yet,  even  "  these  elements  of  ideal  good  " — these  objects 
of  enthusiastic  pursuit — derive  their  real  value  from  the 
pleasure  to  which  they  minister.  The  pursuit  of  such 
ideal  objects  as  truth,  freedom,  beauty,  &c.,  for  their 
own  sakes,  "  is  indirectly  and  secondarily,  though  not 
primarily  and  absolutely,  rational :  on  account  not  only 
of  the  happiness  that  will  result  from  their  attainment, 
but  also  of  that  which  springs  from  their  disinterested 
pursuit.  While  yet,  if  we  ask  for  a  final  criterion  of 
the  comparative  value  of  the  different  objects  of  men's 

1  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.-  iv.,  final  note.        a  Op.  cit.,  bk.  iii.  ch.  xiv.  §  2. 


118  The  Moral  Ideal 

enthusiastic  pursuit,  ...  we  shall  none 'the  less  con- 
ceive it  to  depend  on  the  degree  in  which  they  respec- 
tively conduce  to  happiness."  * 

Is  this  a  fair  and  satisfactory  interpretation  of  such 
appreciations  ?  Is  pleasure  the  only  thing  that  we  regard 
as  having  value  in  itself,  as,  in  itself,  worth  attaining  ? 
Mr  Sidgwick  finds  the  argument  for  Hedonism  in  "  the 
results  of  a  comprehensive  comparison  of  the  ordinary 
judgments  of  mankind : "  2  his  method  is  always  the 
interrogation  of  the  uncorrupted  moral  common -sense. 
Moreover,  he  clearly  states  the  idealistic-  alternative. 
Take  the  case  of  culture.  "  If  the  Hedonistic  view  of 
culture,  as  consisting  in  the  development  of  suscepti- 
bilities for  refined  pleasure  of  various  kinds,  be  rejected, 
it  must  be  in  favour  of  what  I  have  called  the  ideal- 
istic view  :  in  which  we  regard  the  ideal  objects  on  the 
realisation  of  which  our  most  refined  pleasures  depend, 
— knowledge,  or  beauty  in  its  different  forms,  or  a 
certain  ideal  of  human  relations  (whether  thought  of 
as  freedom  or  otherwise) — as  constituting  in  themselves 
ultimate  good,  apart  from  the  pleasures  which  depend 
upon  their  pursuit  and  attainment."  s  His  decision  be- 
tween these  alternative  views  is  that  our  interest  in 
culture  is  ultimately  an  interest  in  pleasure  ;  such 
'  ideal  goods '  "  seem  to  obtain  the  commendation  of 
common  sense,  roughly  speaking,  in  proportion  to  the 
degree"  of  their  hedonistic  productiveness.  Is  it  not 
strange  to  find  such  a  thinker  as  Mr  Sidgwick  agreeing 
with  the  practical  man's  utilitarian  and  practical  estimate 
of  knowledge  ?  It  is  not  the  practical  man,  but  the 
student,  who  is  the  rightful  judge  of  the  value  of  know- 
ledge. It  is  true  that  "  the  meed  of  honour  commonly 
paid  to  science  seems  to  be  graduated,  though  perhaps 
unconsciously,  by  a  tolerably  exact  utilitarian  scale," 
and  that  "  the  moment  the  legitimacy  of  any  branch  of 
scientific  inquiry  is  seriously  disputed,  as  in  the  recent 

1  Loc.  cit.  *  Mind,  O.S.,  vol.  ii.  p.  35.  8  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  34. 


Hedonism  119 

case  of  vivisection,  the  controversy  on  both  sides  is 
generally  conducted  on  an  avowedly  utilitarian  basis."  l 
But  this  popular  and  practical  estimate  of  knowledge 
is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  theoretical  estimate  of  it 
by  the  intellectual  man,  who  has  surely  more  right  to  be 
heard  on  the  question  than  the  practical  man  whose 
interest  and  business  lie  elsewhere.  The  'things  of  the 
mind '  can  be  estimated  aright  only  by  men  of  mind,  not 
by  men  of  affairs ;  and  the  moral  common-sense  of  the 
former  class  is  no  less  entitled  to  a  hearing  than  that  of 
the  latter.  Similarly  it  is  not  the  uncultured  man  and 
the  Philistine  who  may  rightfully  adjudge  the  value  of 
artistic  products.  As  Plato  would  say, 'such  men  have 
not  the  experience  which  alone  fits  a  man  to  judge  of 
good :  these  forms  of  good  are  not  their  good, — they  may 
even  be  their  '  bad.'  One  cannot  help  thinking  that  Mr 
Sidgwick  has  fallen  into  the  old  fallacy  which  he  has 
done  so  much  to  refute,  namely,  that  because  the  good  is 
pleasant,  therefore  it  is  pleasure;  that  because  an  object 
is  not  chosen,  or  regarded  as  good,  unless  it  attracts  or 
pleases,  therefore  it  must  be  chosen  for  the  sake  of  the 
pleasure,  and  its  goodness  must  be  identical  with  its 
pleasantness.  But  we  have  seen  that  the  interests  of  life 
imply  objects  in  which  we  are  interested,  as  well  as  our 
interest  or  pleasure  in  such  objects.  The  ethical  question 
— the  question  of  the  criterion  of  good  or  value — has  to 
do  with  the  content  of  the  ideas  which  move  us  to  action, 
of  the  purposes  and  intentions  of  which  our  actions  are 
the  execution.  The  question  of  ethics  is:  What  are  the 

1  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  xiv.  §  2.  Professor  Bain's  estimate 
of  knowledge  is  no  less  frankly  utilitarian,  and  is  even  more  surprising  as 
the  judgment  of  a  student.  The  value  of  knowledge  is,  like  the  value  of 
money,  merely  instrumental  ;  but,  by  association  of  ideas,  it  comes  to  be 
mistaken  for  an  end  in  itself.  "  Like  money,  knowledge  is  liable  to  be- 
come an  end  in  itself.  Principally  valuable  as  guidance  in  the  various 
operations  of  life,  as  removing  the  stumbling-blocks,  and  the  terrors  of 
ignorance,  it  contracts  in  some  minds  an  independent  charm,  and  gathers 
round  it  so  many  pleasing  associations  as  to  be  a  satisfying  end  of  pursuit. " 
— Mental  and  Moral  Science,  bk.  iv.  ch.  iv.  §  3. 


120  The  Moral  Ideal 

true  interests  ?  In  what  objects  ought  we  to  take 
pleasure  ?  What  is  the  good  ? 

Ethical  value  is  essentially  objective  as  well  as  sub- 
jective. The  ethical  universe  is  a  scale  of  values,  in 
which  the  possible  interests  are  ranked  as  higher  or 
lower,  according  to  the  objects  in  which  they  centre. 
The  final  aim  of  ethical  reflection  is  the  discovery  of  the 
true  objective  centre  of  interest,  as  the  effort  of  the  moral 
life  itself  is  to  make  that  centre  our  own.  Morality  is 
not  the  mere  getting  of  pleasure.  To  be  pleased  is  easy, 
is  inevitable ;  but  to  be  pleased  "  to  the  right  extent, 
and  at  the  right  time,  and  with  the  right  objects,  and  in 
the  right  way,  this  is  not  what  every  one  can  do,  and  is 
by  no  means  easy  ;  and  that  is  the  reason  why  right 
doing  is  rare,  and  praiseworthy,  and  noble."  *  The  ob- 
jectivity of  good  is  no  less  essential  than  the  objectivity 
of  truth.  To  make  truth  subjective,  to  resolve  the  ob- 
ject of  knowledge  into  the  experience  or  consciousness 
of  the  knowing  subject,  were  to  destroy  truth  and  know- 
ledge, v  Knowledge  implies  the  reality  of  its  object :  the 
criterion  of  truth  is  found  in  the  object  which  I  know,  not 
in  me,  the  knower.  Intellectual  subjectivity  means  in- 
tellectual scepticism,  or  the  decentralisation  of  knowledge. 
And  to  make  the  good  subjective,  to  resolve  the  ethical 
object  into  the  experience  or  consciousness  of  its  subject, 
is,  no  less  inevitably,  to  destroy  the  good.  Morality  im- 
plies the  reality  of  its  object ;  the  criterion  of  good  must 
be  found  in  some  object  not  merely  supremely  interesting, 
but  supremely  worthy  of  interest.  If  we  are  to  avoid 
moral  scepticism,  we  must  avoid  ethical  subjectivity,  or 
the  decentralisation  of  the  good. 

To  make  the  ethical  centre  objective  and  absolute, 
rather  than  subjective  and  relative,  is  not,  of  course,  to 
divorce  the  good  from  consciousness,  as  Mr  Sidgwick 
seems  to  think.  It  does  not  follow  that,  because  nothing 
is  good,  as  nothing  is  true,  out  of  relation  to  conscious- 

1  Aristotle,  Ethics,  ii.  9  (2). 


Hedonism,  121 

ness,  therefore  its  goodness,  or  its  truth,  lies  in  the  mere 
state  of  consciousness  itself.  Consciousness,  whether 
intellectual  or  moral,  is  objective,  as  well  as  subjective, 
in  its  reference :  it  is  essentially  an  attitude  of  the  sub- 
ject towards  the  object,  of  the  ego  towards  the  non-ego, 
of  man  towards  the  universe.  And  to  know  the  truth, 
and  to  attain  the  good, — what  is  either  but  the  taking 
of  the  right  attitude  towards  reality,  the  attitude  dic- 
tated by  reality  itself  ? 

Mr  Sidgwick,  it  is  true,  reaches  a  certain  objectivity 
of  view  by  invoking  the  aid  of  reason  as  the  guide  to 
sentient  or  subjective  satisfaction.  But  the  function  of 
reason  is  still  merely  regulative  :  it  provides  the  dis- 
tributive principles  of  a  good  which  is  wholly  constituted 
by  feeling.  Eeason  is  still,  in  Hume's  phrase,  '  the  slave 
of  passion ' ;  for  it  only  discovers  the  path  to  the  goal  of 
sentient  satisfaction,  plans  the  execution  of  an  end  which 
is  already  determined  by  sensibility.  To  be  truly  objec- 
tive, the  good  must  be  rationally  constituted,  as  well  as 
rationally  regulated :  the  content  of  the  end  must  be  the 
expression  and  exponent  of  reason.  The  essential  in- 
adequacy of  Eational  Hedonism  is  seen  in  the  absence 
from  its  scheme  of  the  distinction  between  '  higher '  and 
'  lower '  pleasures.  After  all,  it  provides  merely  a  maxi- 
mum bonum,  'the  greatest  amount  of  pleasure  on  the 
whole ' ;  not  a  summum,  lonum,  a  system  or  hierarchy 
of  goods,  ranged  according  to  their  several  degrees, 
according  to  the  order  of  their  excellence.  Hedonism 
cannot  interpret  the  qualitative,  but  only  the  quantitative, 
aspect  of  the  good.  The  only  distinction  it  can  establish 
is  that  between  the  '  greater '  and  the  '  less ' ;  it  has  no 
place  for  the  '  higher  '  and  the  '  lower.'  It  points  to  the 
greatest,  but  not  to  the  highest  good.  Even  the  Eational 
Hedonism  of  Professor  Sidgwick  exhibits  this  inherent 
deficiency.  Its  regulative  principles  are  prudence,  be- 
nevolence, and  justice, —  all  quantitative  or  economic 
principles.  But  the  true  ethical  alternative  is  always,  as 


122  The  Moral  Ideal 

Dr  Martineau  insists,  between  the  higher  and  the  lower, 
not  between  the  greater  and  the  less.  The  ethical  dis- 
tinction is  one  of  rank,  rather  than  of  amount ;  of  quote, 
rather  than  of  quantum.  Mill,  alone  among  Hedonists, 
acknowledged  this  essential  distinction ;  and  he  obviously 
failed  to  establish  it  upon  a  hedonistic  basis. 

The  ethical  function  of  reason  is  sovereign  and  legis- 
lative ;  and  she  refuses  the  office  of  a  servant,  however 
plausibly  urged  upon  her.  But  Rational  Hedonism  still 
places  pleasure  in  the  seat  of  supreme  honour  and  of 
solitary  dignity,  on  the  throne  of  the  moral  universe : 
pleasure  is  still  the  only  end,  the  only  thing  absolutely 
worthy  of  choice,  that  for  the  sake  of  which  everything  is 
done.  That  seat  of  sovereign  dignity  and  authority  be- 
longs to  reason,  and  she  will  take  no  lower.  It  is  for 
her  to  determine  the  true  content  of  choice, — to  dictate 
the  scale  of  ethical  values,  and  to  assign  to  the  several 
pleasures  of  life  their  place  in  that  scale. 

7.  (&)  Failure  of  sensibility  to  provide  the  prin- 
ciple of  its  own  distribution.  —  This  leads  us  to 
remark  that  Hedonism,  as  an  ethical  theory,  can  never 
account  for  more  than  the  raw  material  of  morality ; 
the  form,  or  principle  of  arrangement,  of  this  raw 
material  must  be  found  elsewhere.  In  other  words, 
sensibility  does  not  provide  for  its  own  organisation ; 
the  unifying  principle  of  its  '  mere  manifold '  must  be 
found  in  a  rational  and  not  in  a  sentient  principle.  To 
adapt  a  Kantian  phrase,  we  may  say  that  if  reason 
without  feeling  is  empty,  feeling  without  reason  is  blind. 
Feeling  needs  the  illumination  of  reason,  and  this  is  not 
to  be  resolved  into  the  mere  illumination  of  consequences 
or  experience.  Insight,  as  well  as  foresight,  is  needed ; 
and  if  foresight  is  the  reward  of  experience,  insight  is  the 
gift  of  reason.  This  is  only  to  repeat  what  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  and  even  Socrates,  said  long  ago — namely,  that 
the  ordering  and  guiding  principle  of  human  life  is  to  be 


Hedonism  123 

found  in  '  right  reason,'  and  that  it  is  the  place  of  feeling 
to  submit  itself  to  that  higher  guidance  and  control. 
Feeling  is  capricious,  peculiar  to  the  individual,  clamant, 
chaotic;  its  life,  unchecked  by  the  control  of  rational 
insight  and  foresight,  would  be  a  chameleon-like  life,  a 
thing  that  owed  its  shape  and  colour  to  the  moments  as 
they  passed.  If  the  life  of  sensibility  is  to  be  unified  or 
organised,  it  can  only  be  through  the  presence  and  opera- 
tion in  it  of  rational  principle. 

This  problem  of  the  organisation  of  sensibility  early 
forced  itself  upon  the  attention  of  hedonistic  moralists. 
It  was  seen  that  the  ordering  of  man's  life  is  in  his  own 
hands,  that  the  organisation  of  sensibility  which  is  effected 
for  the  animal  must  be  effected  ly  man  ;  and  the  question 
forced  itself  upon  reflection,  Whither  must  we  look  for 
guidance  ?  Is  feeling  self-sufficient,  or  must  the  appeal 
be  made  from  feeling  to  reason  ?  The  history  of  Hedon- 
ism reveals,  as  we  have  seen,  a  growing  place  for  reason 
in  the  life  of  feeling.  The  significance  of  this  appeal  to 
reason  in  an  ethic  of  sensibility  seems  not  to  have  been 
clearly  perceived  by  the  Greek  Hedonists,  for  we  find 
the  appeal  made  with  all  openness  and  confidence  by  the 
Epicurean  school.1  A  successful  life  of  feeling  must  be 
a  thoughtful  life ;  a  life  which  shall  attain  the  end  of 
sentient  existence  must  be  a  rationally  conducted  life, 
which  plans  and  considers  and  is  always  master  of  itself : 
the  supreme  virtue  is  prudence.  Modern  Hedonists  have 
been  no  less  conscious  of  the  necessity  of  solving  the 
problem  of  the  organisation  of  feeling.  The  Utilitarians 
especially  have  widened  the  problem  so  as  to  include  the 
organisation  of  the  social,  as  well  as  of  the  individual 
life.  To  the  ancient  virtue  of  prudence  they  have  added 
the  modern  virtue  of  benevolence.  The  problem  of 
organisation  has  thus  become  more  clamant  and  more 

1  Probably  the  eclectic  tendency  thus  manifested  is  to  be  traced  to  the 
prevailingly  practical  interest  of  the  Epicurean  society.  We  find  the 
same  characteristic  in  Stoicism. 


124  The  Moral  Ideal 

complex  thaii  ever.  A  rational  solution  of  this  problem, 
however,  is  seen  to  be  inconsistent  with  Hedonism,  and 
to  involve  a  surrender  of  the  case  for  the  adequacy  of 
that  theory  of  life.  The  attempt  has  been  made,  accord- 
ingly, in  different  ways,  to  reduce  this  apparently  rational 
control  of  sensibility  to  a  mere  control  of  feeling  by 
feeling.  Let  us  consider  the  success  of  these  efforts,  in 
the  case  (1)  of  the  individual,  and  (2)  of  the  social  life. 

(1)  One  of  the  chief  novelties  of  Mill's  statement  of 
the  hedonistic  ethics  is  his  recognition  of  a  qualitative, 
as  well  as  a  quantitative,  difference  between  feelings. 
Feelings  are,  he  insists,  higher  and  lower,  as  well  as 
more  or  less  intense,  enduring,  etc. ;  they  differ  in  rank 
as  well  as  in  strength.  A  new  element  is  thus  added  to 
the  definition  of  happiness.  The  pleasures  of  the  mind 
are  superior  to  those  of  the  body,  not  merely  because  the 
former  are  enduring  and  fruitful  in  other  pleasures,  while 
the  latter  are  evanescent  and  apt  to  carry  with  them 
painful  consequences,  but  because  the  former  are  the 
pleasures  of  the  higher,  the  latter  those  of  the  lower 
nature.  Now,  the  plea  for  this  distinction  of  quality 
stands  or  falls  with  the  validity  or  invalidity  of  the 
reference  to  the  source  of  the  pleasures  compared.  But 
the  invalidity  of  such  a  reference,  from  the  standpoint 
of  Hedonism,  is  perfectly  obvious.  If  pleasure  is  the 
only  good,  then  pleasure  itself  is  the  only  consideration  ; 
the  source  of  the  pleasure  has  no  hedonistic  significance, 
and  ought  not  to  enter  into  the  hedonistic  calculus.  If 
Hedonism  will  be  '  psychological,'  it  must  forego  this  dis- 
tinction of  source,  and,  with  it,  the  distinction  of  quality 
in  pleasures. 

Mill's  appeal  is,  like  Plato's,  to  those  qualified,  by  their 
wide  experience  and  their  powers  of  introspection,  to 
judge  of  the  comparative  value  of  .pleasures.  The  thinker 
knows  the  pleasures  of  thought  as  well  as  the  pleasures, 
say,  of  sport,  while  the  sportsman  knows  only  the  latter 
class  of  pleasures  and  not  the  former ;  the  thinker's 


Hedonism  125 

preference  for  the  pleasures  of  thought  has,  therefore, 
the  authority  of  experience.  The  preference  of  the 
higher  nature  covers  the  case  of  the  lower,  but  not  vice 
xersd.  But,  on  the  hedonistic  theory,  this  claim  to 
authority  must  be  disallowed.  The  preference  of  the 
higher  nature  covers  only  the  case  of  the  higher  nature, 
the  case  of  those  on  the  same  plane  of  sensibility  as 
itself.  Its  preference  (and  the  deliverance  founded  upon 
it)  cannot  be  authoritative  for  a  lower  nature,  for  a 
being  on  a  different  plane  of  sensibility.  A  '  lower ' 
pleasure  will  be  more  intense  to  a  '  lower '  nature ;  and 
if  pleasure  be  the  only  standard,  we  cannot  be  asked  to 
give  up  a  greater  for  a  less  pleasure,  to  sacrifice  quantity 
to  quality.  Quality  is  an  extra-hedonistic  criterion  ;  the 
only  hedonistic  criterion  is  quantity — "the  intensity  of 
each  kind,  as  experienced  by  those  to  whom  it  is  most 
intense."  Indeed,  the  so-called  difference  of  quality  will 
be  found  to  resolve  itself  (so  far  as  pleasure  is  concerned) 
into  a  difference  of  quantity  for  the  higher  nature.  To 
the  higher  nature,  the  higher  pleasure  is  also  the  more 
intense  pleasure ;  to  the  thinker,  say,  the  pleasures  of 
thought  are  more  intense  than  the  pleasures  of  the  chase. 
This  greater  intensity  is  the  only  hedonistic  ground  of 
the  higher  nature's  preference  for  its  own  chosen  pleas- 
ures. Upon  the  lower  nature  the  lower  pleasures  have, 
qud  pleasures,  an  equally  rightful  and  irresistible  claim ; 
and  upon  such  a  nature  the  higher  pleasures  will  have 
no  claim,  as  pleasures,  until  for  it  too  they  have  become 
more  intense,  or  the  means  to  a  more  intense  pleasure. 
Only  thus  can  they  make  good  their  superior  claim  at  the 
bar  of  sensibility. 

If  we  press  Mill  to  assign  the  ultimate  ground  of  this 
preference,  and  of  the  corresponding  difference  in  kind 
between  pleasures,  he  refers  us  to  the  "  sense  of  dignity  " 
which  is  natural  to  man,  and  which  forms  "  an  essential 
part  of  the  happiness  of  those  in  whom  it  is  strong." 
Socrates  would  rather  be  Socrates  discontented  than  a 


126  The  Moral  Ideal 

contented  fool ;  he  could  not  lower  himself  to  the  fool's 
status  and  the  fool's  satisfaction,  without  the  keenest 
sense  of  dissatisfaction,  and  therefore  of  misery.  But 
this  sense  of  dignity  cannot  be  resolved  into  desire  of 
pleasure  ;  and  while  it  certainly  regulates  man's  pleasures, 
and  becomes  a  real  element  in  his  happiness,  it  is  itself  the 
constant  testimony  to  the  possibility  and  the  imperative- 
ness for  man  of  a  higher  life  than  that  of  mere  pleasure. 
It  is  the  utterance  of  the  rational  self  behind  the  self  of 
sensibility,  demanding  a  satisfaction  worthy  of  it — the 
expression  of  its  undying  aspiration  after  a  life  which 
shall  be  the  perfect  realisation  of  its  unique  possibilities, 
and  of  its  eternal  and  divine  discontent  with  any  life  that 
falls  short  of  this  realisation  of  itself.  Not  the  attain- 
ment of  pleasure  as  such,  but  the  finding  of  our  pleasure 
in  activities  which  are  worthy  of  this  higher  and  rational 
nature, — such  is  the  end  set  before  us  by  our  peculiar 
human  sense  of  dignity.  This  interpretation  of  the  end 
does  enable  us  to  understand  the  intrinsic  difference  of 
pleasures,  but  only  at  the  expense  of  surrendering 
Hedonism  as  a  sufficient  ethical  theory.  For  it  is  not 
as  pleasures  that  the  pleasures  are  higher  or  lower.  The 
clue  to  the  distinction  is  found  in  their  common  relation 
to  the  one  identical  rational  self ;  according  as  it  is  more 
or  less  fully  satisfied,  by  being  more  or  less  fully  realised, 
is  the  pleasure  higher  or  lower.  Otherwise,  there  is  no 
such  distinction.  The  dignity  is  the  dignity  of  reason, 
not  of  feeling.  So  great  is  that  dignity  of  reason  that, 
in  its  presence,  the  claims  of  feeling  seem  to  be  hushed 
to  utter  silence ;  that,  before  its  higher  claim,  the  ques- 
tion of  pleasure  and  pain,  in  all  their  infinite  degrees, 
may  even  seem  to  be  unheard.  Are  there  not  occasions 
at  least  when  we  seem  called  upon  to  take  this  heroic 
view  of  life,  and,  in  our  loyalty  to  an  eternal  principle 
of  right,  above  all  particular  sentient  selves  and  their 
pleasures  and  pains,  to  be  content  to  sacrifice  all  our 
capacity  for  pleasure,  it  may  be  utterly  and  for  ever? 


Hedonism  127 

Such  an  action  can  only  be  described  as  faithfulness  to 
the  true  self,  to  the  divine  ideal  of  our  manhood  ;  and 
the  fact  of  the  possibility  of  such  an  action  and  of  other 
actions  which,  though  on  a  more  ordinary  plane,  would 
yet  be  impossible  but  for  the  inspiration  of  such  a  spirit, 
proves  that,  though  man  is  an  individual  subject  of  feel- 
ing— of  passion  so  intense  that  it  may  seem  at  times  to 
constitute  his  very  life — he  is  something  more,  and,  in 
virtue  of  that  '  something  more,'  is  capable  of  rising 
above  himself,  above  his  own  little  life  of  clamant  sensi- 
bility, and  viewing  himself  and  his  present  activity  sub 
specie  ceternitatis,  in  the  clear  light  of  eternal  truth  and 
right,  as  a  member  of  a  rational  order  of  being,  and  sub- 
ject to  the  law  of  that  order.  For  such  an  estimate  of  life 
Hedonism,  as  the  Ethics  of  Sensibility,  cannot  find  a  place. 
Other  hedonistic  writers,  recognising  the  impossibility 
of  reconciling  Mill's  doctrine  of  the  intrinsic  difference  of 
pleasures  with  orthodox  Hedonism,  have  attempted  to 
find  the  clue  to  the  organisation  of  sensibility  outside,  in 
the  external  sanctions  already  mentioned,  in  the  pressure 
of  society  upon  the  individual.  The  seat  of  authority  is, 
they  hold,  outside  the  individual,  in  the  law  of  the  land, 
in  public  opinion,  and  the  like ;  not  within,  in  the  in- 
dividual conscience  :  the  inner  authority  is  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  the  outer.  No  doubt  there  is  a  great  deal  of  truth 
in  this,  as  a  representation  of  the  normal  course  of  moral 
education.  Until  a  moral  being  has  learned  to  control 
himself,  he  must  be  controlled  from  without ;  until  the 
moral  order  is  developed  within  him,  that  order  must  be 
impressed  upon  him.  But  the  progress  of  moral  educa- 
tion brings  us,  sooner  or  later,  to  the  stage  at  which  the 
outer  law,  if  it  is  to  maintain  its  influence,  must  produce 
its  '  certificate  of  birth,'  or,  in  other  words,  must  show  that 
it  is  only  the  reflection  of  an  inner  order.  The  rationale 
of  the  outward  order,  the  '  why '  of  the  social  forces,  must 
inevitably  become  a  question.  This  solution,  therefore, 
only  pushes  the  problem  a  step  further  back. 


128  The  Moral  Ideal 

The  Evolutionists  see  that  the  external  controls,  the 
physical,  social  and  religious,  are  really  "pre-moral  controls 
within  which  the  moral  control  evolves," — its  scaffolding, 
to  be  taken  down  as  soon  as  the  structure  is  complete. 
The  external  pressure  of  environment  must  be  superseded 
by  an  internal  psychological  pressure.  This  inner,  and 
strictly  moral,  control  is  described  by  Spencer  as  the  sub- 
jection of  the  earlier-evolved,  simpler,  and  presentative 
feelings  to  the  later-evolved,  more  complex,  and  repre- 
sentative. But  why  this  subordination  ?  Not  simply 
because  the  one  set  of  feelings  occur  earlier  and  the 
other  later  in  the  evolution,  but  because  the  one  class 
of  feelings  are  more  efficient  factors  in  the  evolution  of 
conduct  than  the  other.  But  how  are  we  to  judge  of 
the  value  of  the  evolution  itself  ?  What  is  the  ideal  or 
type  of  conduct  which  it  is  desirable  to  evolve  ?  Our 
old  question  recurs  once  more,  therefore,  in  the  new  form  : 
What  is  the  criterion  of  ethical  value  by  which  we  may 
define  and  determine  moral  evolution  or  progress  ?  Whither 
moves  the  ethical  process ;  what  form  of  conduct  do  we 
judge  to  be  worth  evolving  ?  Are  the  ethical  process 
and  the  cosmical  process  the  same,  or  even  coincident  ? 
The  fact  that  one  of  the  greatest  contemporary  repre- 
sentatives of  scientific  Evolutionism  has  found  himself 
forced  to  deny  both  the  identity  and  the  coincidence,  is 
striking  proof  that  this  is  no  capricious  or  imaginary 
question.1  The  fact  of  a  certain  order,  and  the  fact  of  its 
gradual  genesis  or  development  in  time,  furnish  no  answer 
to  the  question  of  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  fact ;  here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  answer  to  the  Quid  Facti  is  no  answer  to 
the  Quid  Juris. 

I  think  we  can  now  see  that  it  is  the  sheer  stress  of 
logic  that  has  driven  Professor  Sidgwick  to  appeal  from 
the  bar  of  sensibility  to  that  of  reason  for  the  lacking 
element  of  moral  authority,  for  the  organising  principle 
of  the  ethical  life.  Even  within  the  sphere  of  individual 

1  Cf.  Huxley's  Romanes  Lecture  on  Evolution  and  Ethics. 


Hedonism  129 

experience,  sensibility  does  not  provide  a  principle  which 
shall  determine  its  own  distribution.  How  to  compass 
the  attainment  of  the  greatest  happiness,  not  for  the 
moment  but  on  the  whole,  is  a  problem  which  feeling 
alone  is  unable  to  solve.  Hedonism  fails  to  reach  the 
maximum,  and,  still  more  obviously,  the  summum  of 
individual  happiness.  The  material  of  the  moral  life 
may  be  furnished  by  sensibility,  as  the  material  of  the 
intellectual  life  is  furnished  by  sensation ;  but  the  form 
or  principle  of  arrangement  of  this  raw  material,  the 
unifying  and  organising  principle,  is,  in  the  one  case  as 
in  the  other,  the  gift  of  reason. 

(2)  When  we  pass  beyond  the  sphere  of 'the  individual 
life  to  that  of  society,  we  find  the  same  impasse  for  He- 
donism. If  sensibility  does  not  provide  the  principle  of 
its  own  distribution  within  the  individual  life,  still  less 
does  it  provide  the  principle  of  its  distribution  between 
ourselves  and  others.  If  the  life  of  prudence  and  in- 
dividual virtue  cannot  be  reduced  to  terms  of  mere  sen- 
sibility, still  less  can  the  life  of  justice  and  benevolence 
— the  life  of  social  virtue ;  if  the  instruction  of  reason 
is  necessary  in  the  former  case,  it  is  even  more  obviously 
necessary  in  the  latter.  Yet  the  disciples  of  Hedonism 
have  boldly  thrown  themselves  into  this  forbidding 
breach,  and  have  sought,  in  various  ways,  to  demonstrate 
that,  here  again,  what  seems  to  be  the  product  of  reason 
is,  in  reality,  the  product  of  sensibility.  In  the  first 
place,  Mill  has  tried  to  extend  his  '  psychological  proof ' 
of  Hedonism  in  general  to  altruistic  Hedonism,  or  Utili- 
tarianism :  since  each  desires  his  own  happiness,  it  fol- 
lows that  the  general  happiness  is  desired  by  all.  But 
the  logical  gap  is  so  evident  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  Mill  himself  was  not  aware  of  it.  The  aggregate 
happiness  may  be  the  end  for  the  aggregate  of  individuals, 
and  the  happiness  of  each  may  be  a  unit  in  this  aggre- 
gate end.  But  to  conclude  that  the  greatest  happiness 
of  the  greatest  number  is  therefore  directly,  and  as  such, 

I 


130  TJie  Moral  Ideal 

an  end  for  each  individual,  is  to  commit  the  notorious 
fallacy  of  Division.  Indirectly  and  secondarily — that  is, 
as  the  means  to  the  attainment  of  his  own  happiness — 
the  general  happiness  may  become  an  end  for  the  indi- 
vidual ;  and  thus  an  altruism  may  be  reached,  which  is 
merely  a  transfigured  or  mediate  egoism,  and  benevolence 
may  be  provisionally  vindicated  as  only  a  subtler  and 
more  refined  selfishness.  This,  however,  is  not  the 
altruism  of  Mill  and  the  Utilitarian  school.  Their  aim 
is  to  establish  benevolence  as  the  direct  and  substantive 
law  of  the  moral  life ;  as  the  first,  and  not  the  second 
commandment  of  a  true  ethical  code.  They  offer  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number  as  itself  the 
end,  not  a  means  to  our  own  greatest  happiness. 

Mill  is  conscious  of  the  difficulty  of  the  transition 
from  egoism  to  altruism,  and  he  looks  to  sensibility  to 
fill  the  logical  gap.  We  have  a  feeling  for  the  happiness 
of  others  as  well  as  for  our  own,  as  Shaftesbury  and 
Hutcheson  and  Hume  had  already  maintained;  let  us 
take  our  ground  upon  this  psychological  fact  —  this 
feeling  of  unity  with  our  fellows,  a  mighty  emotional 
force  which  must  break  down  any  barriers  of  mere 
logic.  To  this  disinterested  sympathy  we  may  con- 
fidently commit  the  task  of  the  complete  reconciliation 
of  the  general  with  the  individual  happiness.  For  we 
may  expect  an  indefinite  development  of  the  feeling,  as 
the  pain  which  sympathy  now  carries  with  it  is  super- 
seded by  the  pleasure  of  sympathy  with  more  complete 
lives ;  or,  as  Spencer  states  it  in  the  language  of  evolu- 
tion, as  the  pains  of  sympathy  with  the  pains  of  mal- 
adjustment of  individuals  to  their  environment  are  super- 
seded by  the  pleasures  of  sympathy  with  the  pleasures 
of  more  and  more  perfect  adjustment  to  environment. 

Such  a  solution,  however,  confuses  the  practical  with 
the  theoretical  problem.  It  does  not  follow  that  "  con- 
duct so  altruistic  would  be  egoistically  reasonable,"  and 
what  we  are  in  search  of  is  such  a  rationale  of  altruism 


Hedonism  131 

as  will  reconcile  it  with  egoism.  Nor  can  the  feeling 
of  unity  with  our  fellows,  such  love  as  casts  out  selfish- 
ness, such  perfect  sympathy  as  overcomes  the  dualism  of 
virtue  and  prudence,  of  altruistic  and  egoistic  conduct, 
and  makes  us  love  our  neighbour  as  ourselves,  be  found 
in  all  the  universe  of  sensibility.  Uninstructed  feeling 
is  incompetent  for  the  discharge  of  such  a  splendid  task ; 
though,  when  instructed  and  illuminated  by  rational  in- 
sight, feeling  alone  can  execute  it.  Like  Mill's  '  sense  of 
dignity,'  this  '  feeling  of  unity  '  has  a  higher  certificate  of 
birth  to  show  than  that  of  blind  unilluminated  feeling. 
It,  too,  is  the  child  of  reason  by  sensibility ;  only  the 
marriage  of  these  twain  could  have  such  'a  noble  issue. 
Sensibility  alone  might  unite  us  with  our  fellows ;  but  it 
might  just  as  probably  separate  us  from  them.  For  if 
feeling  is  naturally  sympathetic  and  altruistic,  it  is  also 
naturally  selfish  and  egoistic.  The  problem  is  to  cor- 
relate and  conciliate  these  two  tendencies  of  human  sen- 
sibility. Can  we  trust  the  correlation  and  conciliation 
to  their  own  unguided  operation  ?  May  we  expect  a 
parallelogram  of  these  two  opposing  forces?  On  the 
whole,  must  we  not  say  that  the  tendency  of  mere  sen- 
sibility is  rather  to  separate  and  individualise,  than  to 
unite  and  socialise  men  ?  It  is  reason  that  unites  us ; 
the  sphere  of  the  universal  is  the  sphere  of  thought ;  we 
think  in  common.  Sensibility  separates  us,  shuts  us  up 
each  in  his  own  little,  but  all-important  world  of  sub- 
jectivity ;  its  sphere  is  the  sphere  of  the  particular :  we 
feel  each  for  himself,  and  a  stranger  intermeddleth  not 
with  the  business  of  the  heart.  At  any  rate,  sensibility 
alone,  inevitably  and  intensely  subjective  as  it  is,  would 
never  dictate  that  '  strict  impartiality '  as  between  our 
neighbour's  happiness  and  our  own  which,  Utilitarians 
agree,  must  be  the  principle  of  distribution  of  pleasures 
if  the  maximum  general  happiness  is  to  be  constituted. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  sensibility,  I  cannot  be  strictly 
impartial  in  my  estimate  of  the  relative  value  of  my  own 


132  The  Moral  Ideal 

happiness  and  that  of  others ;  I  caunot  count  myself,  or 
even  others,  '  each  for  one,  and  no  one  for  more  than 
one ' ;  I  cannot  '  love  my  neighbour  as  myself,'  any  more 
than  I  can  love  all  my  neighbours  alike.  I  cannot  re- 
duce the  various  pleasures  that  offer  themselves  in  the 
field  of  possibility  to  a  unit  of  value ;  sensibility  is  not 
a  unitary  principle,  it  does  not  yield  a  common  measure. 
Ultimately,  my  own  pleasure  alone  has  significance  for 
me  as  a  sentient  being.  To  detach  myself  from  it,  or  it 
from  myself,  and  to  regard  it  from  the  standpoint  of  an 
'  impartial  spectator,'  would  be  to  destroy  it.  If  all  were 
thus  strictly  impartial,  there  would  be  no  general,  be- 
cause there  would  be  no  individual  happiness.  Utili- 
tarianism puts  an  impossible  strain  upon  sensibility. 

The  formula  of  Evolution  has  been  brought  to  bear,  as 
we  have  seen,  upon  the  problem  of  the  reconciliation  of 
egoism  with  altruism.  Mr  Spencer  finds  that  there  is 
gradually  establishing  itself,  in  the  history  of  evolving 
conduct,  not  merely  a  compromise,  but  a  conciliation  of 
individual  and  social  interests;  and  he  confidently  con- 
structs a  Utopia  in  which  the  happiness  of  the  individual 
and  the  interests  of  society  will  perfectly  coincide.  Mr 
Stephen,  on  the  other  hand,  acknowledges  a  permanent 
conflict  between  the  two.  "  The  path  of  duty  does  not 
coincide  with  the  path  of  happiness.  ...  By  acting 
rightly,  I  admit,  even  the  virtuous  man  will  sometimes 
be  making  a  sacrifice ; "  it  is  "  necessary  for  a  man  to 
acquire  certain  instincts,  amongst  them  the  altruistic 
instincts,  which  fit  him  for  the  general  conditions  of  life, 
though,  in  particular  cases,  they  may  cause  him  to  be 
more  miserable  than  if  he  were  without  them."  And 
even  Mr  Spencer  acknowledges  "  a  deep  and  involved  " 
— though  not  a  permanent — "  derangement  of  the  natural 
connections  between  pleasures  and  beneficial  actions,  and 
between  pains  and  detrimental  actions."  But,  it  is  con- 
tended, such  a  statement  will  not  be  "  conclusive  for  the 
virtuous  man.  His  own  happiness  is  not  his  sole  ulti- 


Hedonism  133 

mate  aim  ;  and  the  clearest  proof  that  a  given  action  will 
not  Contribute  to  it  will,  therefore,  not  deter  him  from 
the  action."  The  individual,  as  a  member  of  the  social 
organism,  forgets  his  own  welfare  or  happiness  in  that  of 
society. 

From  the  hedonistic  point  of  view,  however,  we  cannot 
thus  merge  the  individual  in  society.  We  must  not  be 
misled  by  the  metaphor  of  the  '  social  organism,' — for  it 
is  only  a  metaphor,  and  a  metaphor,  as  Mr  Stephen  fears, 
"  too  vague  to  bear  much  argumentative  stress."  As 
Professor  Sidgwick  points  out,  it  is  not  the  organism,  but 
"  the  individual,  after  all,  that  feels  pleasure  and  pain." 
It  is  true  that  "  the  development  of  the  society  implies 
the  development  of  certain  moral  instincts  in  the  indi- 
vidual, or  that  the  individual  must  be  so  constituted  as 
to  be  capable  of  identifying  himself  with  the  society,  and 
of  finding  his  pleasure  and  pain  in  conduct  which  is 
socially  beneficial  or  pernicious."  Yet  the  individual 
can  never  wholly  identify  himself  with  the  society, 
simply  because  he  remains,  to  the  last,  an  individual 
It  is  said  that  the  antagonism  of  individual  and  social 
interests  is  incidental  to  the  transition -stages  of  the 
evolution,  and  that,  with  the  development  of  sympathy 
and  the  perfect  adaptation  of  the  individual  to  his  social 
environment,  complete  identity  of  interests  must  be 
brought  about.  But,  so  long  as  the  interest  is  merely 
that  of  pleasure,  perfect  identity  of  interests  is  impos- 
sible. The  metaphor  of  the  social  organism  is  here 
particularly  misleading.  As  Professor  Sorley  urges, 
"  the  feeling  of  pleasure  is  just  the  point  where  indi- 
vidualism is  strongest,  and  in  regard  to  which  mankind, 
instead  of  being  an  organism  in  which  each  part  but 
subserves  the  purposes  of  the  whole,  must  rather  be 
regarded  as  a  collection  of  competing  and  co-operating 
units."  l  From  the  point  of  view  of  pleasure,  society  is 
not  an  organism,  but  an  aggregate  of  individuals ;  and, 

1  Ethics  of  Naturalism,  pp.  139,  140. 


134  The  Moral  Ideal 

if  we  speak  of  the  '  health '  of  the  society,  we  cannot 
mean  its  happiness,  but  simply  the  general  conditions  of 
the  happiness  of  its  individual  members.  It  does  not 
feel,  they  alone  do.  The  several  centres  of  feeling  cannot 
be  resolved  into  a  single  centre.  And,  as  Mr  Stephen 
acknowledges,  there  seems  to  be  a  permanent  dualism 
between  the  '  prudential '  and  the  '  social '  rules  of  life, 
"  corresponding  to  the  distinction  of  the  qualities  which 
are  primarily  useful  to  the  individual  and  those  which 
are  primarily  useful  to  the  society."  The  former  code 
has  not  yet  been  incorporated  in  the  latter.1 

Does  not  the  stress  of  logic  once  more  force  us  to 
appeal,  with  Professor  Sidgwick,  from  sensibility  to 
reason  ?  The  latter  writer  holds  that,  though  strict 
egoistic  Hedonism  cannot  be  transformed  into  universal- 
istic  Hedonism  or  Utilitarianism,  yet  "  when  the  egoist 
offers  .  .  .  the  proposition  that  his  happiness  or  pleas- 
ure is  good  not  only  for  him,  but  absolutely,  he  gives  the 
ground  needed  for  such  a  proof.  For  we  can  then 
point  out  to  him  that  Ms  happiness  cannot  be  a  more 
important  part  of  good,  taken  universally,  than  the  equal 
happiness  of  any  other  person.  And  thus,  starting  with 
his  own  principles,  he  must  accept  the  wider  notion  of 
universal  happiness  or  pleasure  as  representing  the  real 
end  of  reason,  the  absolutely  good  or  desirable."  But 
such  a  hedonistic  perspective  is,  as  Mr  Sidgwick  sees, 
impossible  for  unaided  sensibility ;  to  the  sentient  indi- 
vidual his  own  pleasure  is  indefinitely  "  more  important 
than  the  equal  happiness  of  any  other  person."  The 
good  of  sensibility  is  essentially  a  private  and  individual, 
not  a  common  and  objective  good.  It  is  in  the  common 
sphere  of  reason  that  we  meet ;  and,  having  met  there, 
we  recognise  one  another  when  we  meet  again  in  the 
sphere  of  sensibility.  To  the  rational,  if  not  to  the  sentient 
individual,  we  can  "  point  out  that  his  own  pleasure  is  no 

1  On  the  permanence  of  this  dualism,  cf.   B.  Kidd,  Social  Evolution, 
passim. 


Hedonism  135 

more  important,"  objectively  and  absolutely  regarded, 
"than  the  equal  happiness  of  any  other  person";  and 
sensibility,  thus  illuminated  by  reason,  may  be  trusted  to 
effect  that  reconciliation  of  the  individual  with  the  social 
welfare,  which  it  could  never  have  brought  about  alone. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  problem  at  once  loses  its 
hopeless  aspect.  The  true  altruism,  we  can  see,  is  not 
reached  by  the  negation  of  egoism,  or  only  by  the  ne- 
gation of  the  lower  egoism.  There  is  a  higher  egoism 
which  contains  altruism  in  itself,  and  makes  '  transition ' 
unnecessary.  I  have  not  indeed  discovered  my  own  true 
end,  or  my  own  true  self,  until  I  find  it  to  be  not  ex- 
clusive but  inclusive  of  the  ends  of  other,  selves.  I  am 
not  called,  therefore,  to  transcend  egoism,  and  exchange 
it  for  altruism,  but  to  discover  and  realise  that  true 
egoism  which  includes  altruism  in  itself.  Since  each  is 
an  ego — the  others  as. well  as  I — to  eliminate  egoism 
would  be  to  uproot  the  moral  life  itself.  The  entire 
problem  is  found  within  the  sphere  of  egoism,  not  beyond 
it ;  and  it  is  solved  for  each  individual  by  the  discovery 
and  realisation  of  his  own  true  ego.  For,  truly  seen,  the 
spheres  of  the  different  egos  are  like  concentric  circles. 
The  centre  of  the  moral  life  must  be  found  within  the 
individual  life,  not  outside  it.  The  claim  of  society  upon 
the  individual  is  not  to  be  explained  even  by  such  a  figure 
as  that  of  the  social  organism.  The  moral  ego  refuses 
to  merge  its  proper  personal  life  in  that  of  society.  The 
unity  or  solidarity  of  the  individual  and  society  must 
be  so  conceived  that  the  wider  social  life  with  which 
he  identifies  himself,  so  far  from  destroying  the  personal 
life  of  the  individual,  shall  focus  and  realise  itself  in  that 
life.  But,  if  the  social  and  the  individual  life  are  to  be 
thus  seen — as  concentric  circles,  their  common  centre 
must  be  found ;  and  it  can  be  found  only  in  reason,  not 
in  sensibility.  Lives  guided  by  mere  sensibility  are 
eccentric,  and  may  be  antagonistic ;  only  lives  guided  by 
a  sensibility  which  has  itself  been  illuminated  by  reason 


136  The  Moral  Ideal 

are   concentric    and,    necessarily,   co  -  operative,   because 
directed  to  a  common  rational  end. 

8.  (c)  The  hedonistic  account  of  duty. — Hedonism 
tends  still  further  to  break  down  moral  reality  by  its 
interpretation  of  moral  law  as  essentially  identical  with 
physical,  by  its  resolution  of  the  ideal  into  the  actual, 
of  the  '  ought'  into  the  '  is.'  This  criticism  has  been  well 
put  by  Professor  Sidgwick  in  the  statement  that  "  psy- 
chological Hedonism  is  incompatible  with  ethical  Hedon- 
ism." If  it  is  the  law  of  our  nature  to  seek  pleasure, 
then  there  is  no  more  meaning  in  the  command,  '  Thou 
shalt  seek  it,'  than  there  would  be  in  the  command, 
'  Thou  shalt  fall,'  to  the  stone  whose  nature  it  is  to  fall. 
The  law  or  uniformity  of  nature  is  in  the  one  case 
physical,  in  the  other  psychological ;  but,  in  both  cases, 
it  is  uniformity  of  nature.  In  the  words  of  Bentham, 
so  "  sovereign  "  are  those  "  masters  " — pain  and  pleasure 
— that  "  it  is  for  them  alone,"  not  only  "  to  point  out 
what  we  ought  to  do,"  but  "  to  determine  what  we  shall 
do.  On  the  one  hand,  the  standard  of  right  and  wrong, 
on  the  other,  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  are  fastened 
to  their  throne.  They  govern  us  in  all  we  do,  in  all  we 
say,  in  all  we  think ;  every  effort  we  can  make  to  throw 
off  our  subjection  will  serve  but  to  demonstrate  and  con- 
firm it.  In  words  a  man  may  pretend  to  abjnre  their 
empire,  but  it  reality  he  will  remain  subject  to  it  all  the 
while."1  If  pleasure  is  the  constant  and  inevitable 
object  of  desire,  and  also  the  true  end  of  life,  it  cannot 
present  itself,  except  temporarily  and  relatively,  as  ethical 
law  or  '  ought,'  as  dictate  or  imperative.  But,  with  this 
resolution  of  moral  law  into  natural  law,  the  conception 
of  duty  or  obligation  is  at  once  invalidated.  Man's  atti- 
tude to  the  law  of  his  life  becomes  essentially  the  same 
as  the  attitude  of  other  natural  beings :  in  him,  as  in 
all  else — animal,  plant,  inorganic  thing — nature  must 

1  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  i.  §  1. 


Hedonism  137 

inevitably  achieve  its  own  end.  The  only  difference 
between  man  and  the  other  beings  is  that  he  can  see 
further  reaches  of  the  road  which  he  and  they  must  in 
common  travel. 

This  inevitable  logic  of  the  theory  is  recognised  by  its 
modern  disciples ;  and  the  attempt  is  made,  in  the  true 
empirical  spirit,  to  account  for  the  illusion  of  obligation 
by  establishing  its  relative  validity,  and  by  exhibiting 
its  genesis  and  function.  Two  classes  of '  sanctions  '  have 
been  recognised — the  external  and  the  internal.  Ben- 
tham  recognises  only  the  external  sanctions — physical, 
political,  moral  or  popular,  and  religious — four  forces, 
ultimately  resolvable  into  the  single  force  of  nature  itself, 
which  coerce  man  to  act  for  the  general  happiness  rather 
than  selfishly  to  seek  his  own.  Mill,  Spencer,  and  Bain 
also  lay  much  stress  upon  the  external  sanctions  of 
morality — the  coercion  of  public  opinion,  the  law  of  the 
land,  education,  etc.  They  insist,  however,  that  the  ulti- 
mate sanction  is  an  internal  one.  There  is  an  authority 
other  than  that  of  mere  force ;  the  element  of  coercion 
is  not  the  ultimate  factor  in  morality.  There  is  an 
inner  authority,  which  comes  with  insight  into  the  utility 
of  our  actions.  The  recognition  of  this  inner  authority 
brings  with  it  emancipation  from  obligation  in  the  sense 
of  coercion,  and  the  substitution  of  spontaneity  for  con- 
straint. This  emancipation,  however,  merely  means,  as 
Evolutionism  explains  it,  that  the  law  of  his  environ- 
ment, physical  and  social,  has  become  the  law  of  man's 
own  life ;  that  the  outer  has  become  an  inner  law ;  and 
that  he  does  not  feel  the  pressure  any  longer,  because  the 
moulding  of  him  into  the  form  of  his  environment  has 
been  perfected.  Thus  the  evolution  of  morality  falls 
within  the  evolution  of  nature,  and  our  fancied  emanci- 
pation from  the  necessity  of  the  '  nature  of  things '  is 
only  a  demonstration  of  the  perfection  of  nature's  mastery 
over  us. 

But,  indeed,  an  ultimate  vindication  of  obligation  is 


133  The  Moral  Ideal 

obviously  impossible  on  the  hedonistic  theory.  Feeling 
cannot  be  the  source  of  this  idea.  Sensibility,  being 
essentially  subjective  and  variable,  cannot  yield  the 
objectivity  and  universality  of  the  ethical  imperative. 
If  the  state  of  my  sensibility  be  the  sole  criterion  of  good 
and  evil  activity,  I  cannot  (theoretically  at  least)  be 
obliged  to  do  what  offends  my  sensibility ;  I  must  so  act 
as  to  gratify  it.  But  feeling  is  just  that  element  in  my 
nature  and  experience  which  I  cannot  universalise ;  my 
sensibility  is  my  intimate  and  exclusive  individual  pro- 
perty, and  its  word  must  be  final  for  me.  I  cannot  even 
be  coerced  to  act  against  the  dictates  of  my  feeling ;  if,  in 
my  own  nature,  I  have  no  other  guide,  then  the  outward 
constraint  must  become  tho  inward  constraint  of  sensi- 
bility, and  this  necessity  of  feeling  is  still  the  '  must,' 
or  rather  the  'is,'  of  nature,  not  the  'ought -to -be'  of 
morality.  But  is  not  such  a  translation  of  '  ought '  into 
'  must '  or  '  is  '  a  violation  once  more  of  the  healthy  moral 
consciousness  of  mankind  ?  The  reality  of  moral  obli- 
gation stands  or  falls  with  the  reality  of  the  distinction 
between  the  ideal  and  the  actual ;  moral  obligation  is 
man's  attitude  towards  the  moral  ideal.  If,  therefore, 
we  resolve  the  ideal  into  the  actual,  as  'psychological 
Hedonism'  does,  we  make  the  attitude  of  duty  im- 
possible. 

This  consequence  is  frankly  accepted  by  at  least  some 
of  the  leaders  of  the  Evolutionary  school.  The  sense  of 
obligation  is,  they  say,  only  temporary,  existing  during 
the  earlier  stages  of  the  evolution  of  morality,  but  des- 
tined to  disappear  with  the  completion  of  the  process. 
Moral  life  is,  in  its  ideal,  perfectly  spontaneous,  and 
is  always  tending  to  become  more  entirely  so.  "The 
sense  of  duty  or  moral  obligation  is  transitory,  and  will 
dimmish  as  fast  as  moralisation  increases."  *  But  is 
not  the  conception  of  duty  or  obligation  a  central  and 
essential  element  of  the  moral  life,  to  be  explained  and 

1  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  vol.  i.  p.  127. 


Hedonism  139 

vindicated  in  its  permanent  and  absolute  validity,  rather 
than  explained  away  as  only  temporarily  and  relatively 
valid  ?  Moral  progress,  while  in  a  sense  it  liberates  us 
from  the  irksomeness  of  duty,  also  brings  with  it  a  larger 
sense  of  duty,  and  a  more  entire  submission  to  it.  The 
disappearance  of  the  conception  would  mean  either  sink- 
ing to  the  level  of  the  brutes,  or  rising  to  the  divine. 
As  Kant  contended,  to  act  without  a  sense  of  obligation 
does  not  become  our  station  in  the  moral  universe.  It  is 
this  characteristic  of  the  moral  life  that  separates  it  for 
ever  from  the  life  of  nature.  The  moral  life  cannot, 
as  moral,  become  spontaneous  or  simply  natural.  The 
goal  of  the  physical  evolution  and  that  of  the  moral  are 
not,  ipso  facto,  the  same.  A  perfectly  comfortable  life, 
that  is,  a  life  in  which  the  discomfort  of  imperfect 
adaptation  to  the  conditions  of  life  should  no  longer  be 
felt,  would  not  necessarily  be  a  perfect  moral  life.  Thus, 
as  from  the  non-moral  a  g^asi-morality  was  evolved,  so 
into  the  non-moral  it  would  ultimately  disappear.  To 
'  naturalise  the  moral  man '  would  be  to  destroy  morality. 
To  make  the  sense  of  duty  a  coefficient  of  the  actual,  by 
interpreting  it  as  merely  the  transitional  effect  and  mani- 
festation of  the  imperfect  adjustment  of  the  individual  to 
his  environment,  may  be  a  partial  account,  but  is  at  any 
rate  a  very  inadequate  account,  of  the  moral  situation. 
That  situation  is  not  fully  understood  until,  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  law  and  duty,  is  heard  the  eternal  claim  of 
the  ideal  upon  the  actual. 

9.  (d)  Its  resolution  of  virtue  into  prudence. — In 

yet  another  respect  does  the  hedonistic  theory  invalidate, 
instead  of  explaining,  the  healthy  moral  consciousness  of 
mankind.  Eecognising  in  duty  only  a  larger  and  wiser 
expediency,  it  resolves  virtue  into  prudence.  The  dis- 
tinction between  good  and  evil  becomes  a  merely  relative 
one,  a  distinction  of  degree  and  not  of  kind.  All  motives 
being  essentially  the  same,  moral  evil  is  resolved  into 


140  Tlie  Moral  Ideal 

intellectual  error ;  the  ethical  distinction  disappears  in 
the  psychological  identity.  "  On  the  hedonistic  supposi- 
tion, every  object  willed  is  on  its  inner  side,  or  in  respect 
of  that  which  moves  the  person  willing,  the  same.  The 
difference  between  objects  willed  lies  on  their  outer  side, 
in  effects  which  follow  from  them,  but  are  not  included  in 
them  as  motives  to  the  person  willing."  Thus  Bentham 
says  that  though  "  it  is  common  to  speak  of  actions  as 
proceeding  from  good  or  bad  motives,"  "  the  expression  is 
far  from  being  an  accurate  one,"  and  it  is  "  requisite  to 
settle  the  precise  meaning  of  it,  and  observe  how  far 
it  quadrates  with  the  truth  of  things.  With  respect  to 
goodness  and  badness,  as  it  is  with  everything  else  that  is 
not  itself  either  pain  or  pleasure,  so  is  it  with  motives. 
If  they  are  good  or  bad,  it  is  only  on  account  of  their 
effects :  good,  on  account  of  their  tendency  to  produce 
pleasure,  or  avert  pain  ;  bad,  on  account  of  their  tendency 
to  produce  pain,  or  avert  pleasure.  Now  the  case  is, 
that  from  one  and  the  same  motive,  and  from  every  kind 
of  motive,  may  proceed  actions  that  are  good,  others  that 
are  bad,  and  others  that  are  indifferent." l  He  concludes 
that "  there  is  no  such  thing  as  any  sort  of  motive  that  is 
in  itself  a  bad  one."  "  Let  a  man's  motive  be  ill-will ; 
call  it  even  malice,  envy,  cruelty ;  it  is  still  a  kind  of 
pleasure  that  is  his  motive :  the  pleasure  he  takes  at  the 
thought  of  the  pain  which  he  sees,  or  expects  to  see,  his 
adversary  undergo.  Now,  even  this  wretched  pleasure, 
taken  by  itself,  is  good :  it  may  be  faint ;  it  may  be 
short :  it  must  at  any  rate  be  impure :  yet  while  it  lasts, 
and  before  any  bad  consequences  arrive,  it  is  as  good 
as  any  other  that  is  not  more  intense." 2 

In  this  interpretation  of  motives  we  see  demonstrated 
once  more  the  externalism  and  the  intellectualism  of 
the  theory.  The  criterion  is  found  outside  the  action,  in 
the  consequences ;  not  within  the  action,  in  the  motive. 

1  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  ch.  x.  §§  11,  12. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  §  10,  Note. 


Hedonism  141 

Actions  are  simply  tendencies  to  produce  certain  results. 
And  in  so  far  as  we  are  forced  from  the  outer  to  the  inner 
view  of  the  action,  from  the  result  itself  to  the  tendency, 
our  judgment  proceeds  entirely  upon  the  relative  intel- 
lectual efficiency  of  the  tendency  in  question.  The  differ- 
ence between  virtue  and  vice  is  reduced  to  one  between 
prudence  and  imprudence.  The  intellectual  process  may 
be  more  or  less  correct,  the  vision  of  the  consequences 
may  be  more  or  less  clear ;  but,  inasmuch  as  the  moral  or 
practical  source  of  the  action  is  always  found  in  the  same 
persistent  and  dominant  desire  for  pleasure,  the  intrinsic 
value  of  the  action  remains  invariable.  As  Professor 
Laurie  puts  it :  "A  man  may  be  careless  or  stupid,  and 
cast  up  the  columns  of  his  conduct-ledger  wrong ;  or  he 
may  be  foolish,  unwise,  intellectually  perverse ;  but  noth- 
ing more  and  nothing  worse."  Of  such  a  theory  must 
we  not  say,  with  Green,  that  "  though  excellent  men  have 
argued  themselves  into  it,  it  is  a  doctrine  which,  nakedly 
put,  offends  the  unsophisticated  conscience  ;"  that,  instead 
of  explaining  morality,  Hedonism  explains  it  away  ?  For 
the  very  essence  of  morality  is  that  the  distinction  between 
good  and  evil  is  a  distinction  of  principle,  and  not  merely 
of  result,  an  intrinsic  and  essential,  not  an  extrinsic  and 
contingent  distinction.  With  the  elimination  of  this  dis- 
tinction in  principle,  the  strictly  ethical  element  in  the 
case  is  eliminated.  With  the  glory  of  the  ideal,  vanish 
also  the  shame  and  sorrow  of  failure  to  attain  it ;  with 
the  critical  significance  of  moral  alternative  vanish  also 
the  infinite  possibilities  of  moral  life :  all  its  lights  and 
shadows,  all  the  strangely  interesting  '  colours  of  good 
and  evil '  disappear,  leaving  only  the  blank  monotony  of 
a  prudential  calculation. 

10.  (e)  Its  inadequate  interpretation  of  character. 
— The  externalisin  of  the  theory  involves  in  its  turn 
a  misleading  and  inverted  view  of  character,  an  estimate 
of  it  which  surely  misses  its  true  significance.  The 


142  The  Moral  Ideal 

hedonistic  point  of  view  is  that  of  consequences  and 
results,  and  only  indirectly  that  of  motives  and  inten- 
tions. Conduct  alone,  therefore,  is  of  direct  and  primary 
importance  ;  the  significance  of  character  is  indirect  and 
secondary.  The  attainment  of  a  certain  type  of  character, 
or  of  a  certain  bent  of  will,  is,  indeed,  of  the  highest  im- 
portance, but  only  because  it  is  the  surest  guarantee  of 
a  certain  type  of  activity.  The  latter  is  desirable  in  it- 
self, and  as  an  end ;  the  former  is  desirable  only  as  the  best 
means  towards  the  attainment  of  this  end.  Character,  in 
other  words,  is  instrumental;  the  good  will  is  a  means 
to  an  end,  not  an  end-in-itself ;  will,  like  intellect,  is 
subordinated  to  feeling.  The  whole  estimate  of  motives, 
as  compared  with  actual  consequences,  in  the  hedonistic 
school,  implies  this  view ;  but  we  have  the  explicit  state- 
ment of  Mill  himself  as  to  the  real  importance  of  the 
good  will.  "  It  is  because  of  the  importance  to  others  of 
being  able  to  rely  absolutely  on  our  feelings  and  conduct, 
and  to  oneself  of  being  able  to  rely  on  one's  own,  that  the 
will  to  do  right  ought  to  be  cultivated  into  this  habitual 
independence.  In  other  words,  this  state  of  the  will  is  a 
means  to  good,  not  intrinsically  a  good."  *  This  is  to 
say  that  the  state  of  feeling,  or  the  production  of  pleasure, 
is  the  end,  the  only  thing  always  and  altogether  good ; 
while  the  character  of  the  will  is  only  a  means  to  this 
end.  Professor  Gizycki  forms  precisely  the  same  estimate 
of  the  good  will.  "  Virtue,"  he  says,  "  is  the  highest  ex- 
cellence of  man.  It  is  not  an  excellence  of  the  body,  but 
of  the  mind;  and  not  of  the  understanding,  but  of  the 
will.  Virtue,  therefore,  is  excellence  of  will,  or,  in  short, 
a  good  will.  Why  is  it  the  highest  excellence  ?  Because 
nothing  so  much  accords  with  the  ultimate  standard  of 
all  values.  The  character  of  man  is  the  principal  source 
of  the  happiness,  as  well  as  of  the  misery,  of  man- 
kind. Certainly  also  health,  strength,  and  intelligence 
are  essential  conditions  of  human  welfare ;  but  the  good 

1  Utilitarianism,  ch.  iv. 


Hedonism  143 

will  is  still  more  essential,  for  it  alone  guarantees  a 
benevolent  direction  of  the  others." l  The  good  man, 
then,  according  to  the  hedonistic  estimate,  is  simply  a 
good  instrument,  warranted  not  to  go  wrong,  but  to  con- 
tinue steadily  producing  the  greatest  amount  of  happiness 
possible  in  the  circumstances,  whether  for  himself  or  for 
others. 

Now,  this  interpretation  of  character,  it  seems  to  me, 
falsifies  the  healthy  moral  consciousness  of  mankind, 
by  simply  reversing  its  estimate.  That  estimate  is  that 
character,  the  attainment  of  a  certain  type  of  personality 
or  bent  of  will,  is  not  a  means  but  an'end-in-itself ;  that 
this,  and  not  the  production  of  a  certain  state  of  feeling, 
is  the  only  thing  which  is  always  and  altogether  good, 
and  itself  '  the  ultimate  standard  of  all  values.'  And 
why  ?  Because  character  is  the  expression  and  exponent 
of  the  total  personality.  Neither  the  sentient  nor  the  in- 
tellectual state,  but  that  state  of  will — that  condition  of 
the  self — which  includes  them  both,  is  the  ultimate  and 
absolute  good,  the  chief  end  of  man.  It  is  true  that  this 
form  of  being  is  always  at  the  same  time  a  form  of  doing, 
that  character  and  conduct  are  inseparable,  that  t&e  ex- 
presses itself  in  ivipyeia.  But  the  character  is  not  there 
for  the  sake  of  the  conduct,  the  being  for  the  sake  of  the 
doing.  That  would  still  be  an  external  view,  and  would 
make  character  merely  instrumental.  This  is  true  even 
of  Mr  Stephen's  view,  that  moral  progress  is  always  from 
the  form  '  Do  this '  to  the  form  '  Be  this.'  As  long 
as  we  thus  distinguish  the  being  from  the  doing,  the 
character  from  the  conduct,  our  interpretation  must  be 
inadequate.  For  we  are  still  thinking  of  will  as  if  it 
were  a  machine,  cunningly  contrived  so  as  to  produce 
something  beyond  itself.  But,  as  Aristotle  points  out,  the 
activity  may  be  itself  the  end,  and  in  natural  activities 
(QvatKai),  as  distinguished  from  artificial  (rexvtKaf),  this  is 
the  case.  Above  all,  in  the  case  of  the  human  will,  the 

1  Moral  Philosophy,  p.  112  (Eng.  trans.) 


144  The  Moral  Ideal 

end  is  not  something  beyond  the  activity,  but  is  'simply 
ivtpytia  T//u^fjc,  such  an  Ivspytia  as  begets  a  certain  E£<C, 
or  habit  of  similar  activity.  The  will  is  not  to  be  re- 
garded as  making  something  else — even  a  state  of  feeling, 
but  always  and  only  as  making  itself.  By  separating  the 
action  from  the  person,  conduct  from  character,  and  by 
placing  the  emphasis  on  the  conduct  rather  than  on  the 
character,  Hedonism  misses  the  true  significance  of  both. 
The  ethical  importance  of  conduct  is  only  indirect,  as 
the  exponent  of  character;  the  ethical  importance  of 
character  is  direct  and  absolute.  Character  and  activity 
are  inseparable ;  character  is  a  habitual  activity.  But 
the  ethical  activity  which  is  identical  with  character  is 
not  properly  regarded  as  productive  of  anything  beyond 
itself ;  it  is  its  own  end,  and  exceeding  great  reward. 

11.  (/)  The  final  metaphysical  alternative. — In 
coming  to  a  final  judgment  as  to  the  value  of  Hedonism 
as  a  theory  of  the  moral  ideal,  we  must  be  guided  by 
metaphysical  considerations  with  regard  to  man's  ultimate 
nature,  and  place  in  the  universe.  It  has  been  truly  said 
that  a  noble  action  or  life  is  a  grand  practical  speculation 
about  life's  real  meaning  and  worth.  Hedonism,  like 
every  ethical  theory,  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  implicitly,  if 
not  explicitly,  a  metaphysical  speculation  of  this  kind. 
What  are  we  to  say  of  its  value  ? 

The  hedonistic  view  is  the  empirical,  scientific,  or 
naturalistic  view  of  human  life ;  it  is  the  expression  of 
ethical  realism,  as  distinguished  from  ethical  idealism  or 
transcendentalism.  It  derives  the  ideal  from  the  actual, 
the  '  ought-to-be '  from  the  '  is.'  To  it  the  ideal  is  only  the 
shadow  which  the  actual  casts  before  it.  Its  effort  is  "  to 
base  ethics  on  facts,  to  derive  the  rules  of  our  attitude 
toward  facts  from  experience,  to  shape  our  ideals  not  from 
the  airy  stuff  of  something  beyond  the  ken  of  science,  but 
in  accordance  with  laws  derived  from  reality."  It  is  an 
attempt  to  naturalise  the  moral  man,  by  showing  the 


Hedonism  145 

fundamental  identity  of  moral  laws  with  the  laws  of 
nature.  This  naturalism  and  empiricism  of  the  hedonistic 
theory  reach  their  culmination  in  the  '  scientific '  ethics 
of  the  Evolutionary  school. 

The  metaphysical  question  is,  more  particularly,  the 
question  of  the  nature  and  worth  of  the  human  person. 
"  Conduct  will  always  be  different,"  says  M.  Fouille'e, 
"  according  to  the  value,  more  or  less  relative  and  fleet- 
ing, which  one  accords  to  the  human  person ;  according 
to  the  worth,  more  or  less  incomparable,  which  we  attri- 
bute to  individuality."  Is  man  an  end-in-himself,  the 
bearer,  as  no  other  creature  is,  of  the  divine  and  eternal, 
capable  of  identifying  himself  with  and  forwarding  the 
divine  end  of  the  universe  by  accepting  it  as  his  life's 
ideal,  or  of  antagonising,  and  even,  in  a  sense,  of  frus- 
trating it  ?  Is  he  a  free  spiritual  being,  with  a  sentient 
and  animal  nature,  or  is  he  only  a  '  higher  animal '  ? 
In  the  words  of  the  writer  just  quoted :  "  There  are 
circumstances  in  which  the  alternative  which  presents 
itself  in  consciousness  is  the  following, — Is  it  necessary 
to  act  as  if  my  sensible  and  individual  existence  were 
all,  or  as  if  it  were  only  a  part  of  my  true  and  universal 
existence  ? " 

Hedonism  rests  upon  what  Mill  has  happily  named 
the  'psychological'  theory  of  the  self.  What  Professor 
James  calls  the  '  me,'  the  '  stream '  of  consciousness,  is 
regarded  as  the  total  and  ultimate  self :  man  is  a 
'  bundle  of  states,'  and  nothing  more.  It  follows  that 
his  sole  concern  in  life  is  with  these  passing  states  of 
feeling,  which  are  not  his,  but  he.  If  we  are  merely 
sentient  beings,  subjects  of  sensibility,  then  the  nature 
of  that  sensibility  must  be  all  in  all  to  us.  If  the  per- 
manence of  a  deeper  rational  selfhood  is  a  mere  illusion, 
and  the  changing  sentient  selfhood  is  alone  real ;  then 
our  concern  is  with  the  latter,  not  with  the  former,  and 
Cyrenaicisin  is  the  true  creed  of  life.  At  most,  virtue  is 
identical  with  prudence. 

K 


146  The  Moral  Ideal 

But  we  cannot,  at  least  in  ethics  and  in  metaphysics, 
thus  identify  the  self  with  its  experience.  Interpret  our 
deeper  selfhood  how  we  may,  we  must  acknowledge  that 
we  are  more  than  the  '  stream '  of  our  feelings.  Our  very 
nature  is  to  transcend  the  present,  and  to  regard  our  life 
as  having  a  permanent  meaning  and  reality.  These 
experiences  are  mine,  part  of  my  total  and  continuous 
experience,  and  I  am  more  than  they.  It  needs  such  an 
'  I '  to  account  for  the  '  psychological  Me.'  The  self  per- 
sists through  all  its  changing  states,  and  its  demand  for 
satisfaction  is  the  unceasing  spring  of  the  moral  life.  It 
is  not  a  mere  sum  of  feelings ;  it  is  their  unity,  that  by 
reference  to  which  alone  they  gain  their  ethical  signifi- 
cance. In  mere  feeling  there  is  no  abiding  quality,  it  is 
a  thing  of  the  moment.  The  devotee  of  pleasure  is  no 
richer  at  the  close  of  life  than  the  beggar  or  the  martyr. 
His  pleasures,  like  the  latter's  pains,  have  passed,  as  all 
mere  feelings  must.  But  lie  remains,  and  all  his  life's 
experience,  from  first  to  last,  has  left  its  record  in  his 
character,  in  the  permanent  structure  of  the  self.  "  Earth 
changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure."  A  theory  of 
life  which  concerns  itself  only  with  the  passing  experience, 
and  not  with  the  permanent  character  of  the  self,  is 
fundamentally  inadequate. 

12.  The  merit  and  demerit  of  Hedonism. — Hedon- 
ism does  well  in  emphasising  the  claims  of  sensibility  in 
human  life  ;  but  it  errs,  either  in  asserting  these  to  be 
the  exclusive  claims,  or  in  subordinating  to  them  the 
more  fundamental  claims  of  reason.  To  take  the  demerit 
first,  the  history  of  Hedonism  is  itself  a  demonstration  of 
the  impossibility  of  an  ethic  of  pure  sensibility.  The 
gradual  modification  of  the  theory  which  we  have  traced 
is  a  gradual  departure  from  strict  hedonistic  orthodoxy, 
a  gradual  admission  of  reason  to  offices  which  at  first 
were  claimed  for  sensibility.  Man's  pleasure -seeking, 
being  man's,  cannot,  the  Hedonists  very  early  saw,  be  un- 


Hedonism  147 

reflective;  and,  in  the  development  of  the  theory,  the 
reflective  element  is  more  and  more  emphasised.  The 
successful  life  of  pleasure  is  acknowledged  to  be  essen- 
tially a  calculating  life,  a  life  of  thought.  Mere  feeling, 
it  is  found,  is  an  insufficient  principle  of  unity.  It 
unifies  neither  the  individual  life  itself,  nor  the  individual 
and  the  social  life.  It  does  not  supply  a  regulative  prin- 
ciple, a  principle  of  the  distribution  of  pleasure.  Sensi- 
bility, like  sensation,  is  a  mere  manifold  which  has  to 
be  unified  by  the  rational  self :  as  the  one  is  the  material 
of  the  intellectual  life,  the  other  is  the  material  of  the 
moral  life.  But  the  form  of  knowledge  and  of  morality 
alike  is  rational.  Feeling  does  not  provide  for  its  own 
guidance  ;  if  it  is  to  be  the  guide  of  human  life,  the 
darkness  of  animal  sensibility  must  receive  the  illumin- 
ation of  reason.  Sooner  or  later,  Hedonism  finds  itself 
compelled  to  appeal  to  reason  for  the  form  of  morality ; 
and  the  history  of  the  theory  is  the  story  of  how  this 
rationalism  which  was  implicit  in  it  from  the  first  has 
gradually  become  explicit. 

Yet  sensibility  is  the  material  of  morality ;  and  if  we 
would  not  have  the  mere  empty  form,  we  must  recognise 
the  momentous  significance  of  the  life  of  sensibility  in- 
formed by  reason.  Feeling  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
moral  life,  which  no  ethical  theory  can  afford  to  overlook ; 
and  Hedonism  has  done  well  to  emphasise  its  importance. 
A  merely  rational  life,  excluding  sensibility,  is  as  impos- 
sible for  man  as  a  life  of  mere  sensibility  without  reason. 
The  rational  life  is  for  him  a  life  of  sensibility  rationalised, 
or  regulated  by  reason ;  and  his  total  rational  well-being 
must  report  itself  in  sensibility.  This  is  the  permanent 
truth  in  Hedonism.  The  ascetic  ideal  is  a  false  and 
inadequate  one ;  it  means  the  dwarfing  of  our  moral 
nature,  the  drawing  away  of  the  very  sap  of  its  life.  The 
spring  of  the  action,  its  origin,  is  in  sensibility;  if  the 
end  or  motive  is  a  product  of  reason,  the  roots  of  its 
attractive  power  are  in  sensibility.  And  the  way  to  the 


148  The  Moral  Ideal 

attainment  of  the  end  lies  through  pleasure  and  pain ; 
the  state  of  feeling  is  not  merely  the  index  and  con- 
comitant of  successful  pursuit,  it  is  a  constant  guide  to- 
wards success  ;  and  attainment  itself  brings  with  it  a  new 
pleasure,  as  failure  brings  with  it  a  new  pain.  Pleasure 
is,  as  Aristotle  said,  the  very  bloom  of  goodness,  it  is  the 
very  crown  of  virtue.  The  threads  of  which  our  life  is 
woven  are  threads  of  feeling,  if  the  texture  of  the  web  is 
reason's  work.  The  Hedonist  unweaves  the  web  of  life 
into  its  threads,  and,  having  unwoven  it,  he  cannot  recover 
the  lost  design. 

I  think  we  must  go  even  further,  and  admit  that,  while 
the  mere  distinctions  of  feeling,  as  pleasant  or  painful, 
are  not,  as  such,  moral  distinctions,  and  do  not  always 
coincide  with  the  latter,  yet  these  distinctions  are  natu- 
rally connected  and  coincident.  If  pleasure  is  not  itself 
the  good,  it  is  its  natural  and  normal  index  and  expres- 
sion, as  pain  is  the  natural  and  normal  index  and  ex- 
pression of  evil.  Hence  the  problem  always  raised  for 
man  by  the  suffering  of  the  good,  the  problem  that  fills 
the  book  of  Job,  and  seems  to  have  been  deeply  felt  by 
Plato.  In  the  second  book  of  the  Republic,  we  find  an 
impressive  picture  of  a  life  of  perfect  justice  (Plato's  word 
for  righteousness),  misunderstood  and  misinterpreted,  a 
life  that  is  perfectly  just,  but  seems  to  men  who  cannot 
understand  it  to  be  most  unjust.  "  They  will  say  that 
in  such  a  situation  the  just  man  will  be  scourged,  racked, 
fettered,  will  have  his  eyes  burnt  out,  and  at  last,  after 
suffering  every  kind  of  torture,  will  be  crucified ;  and  thus 
learn  that  it  is  best  to  resolve  not  to  be,  but  to  seem, 
just."1  The  'just  man'  has  generally  been  misunder- 
stood by  his  fellows;  goodness  has  always  meant  suffer- 
ing, its  paths  have  never  been  altogether  paths  of  pleas- 
antness and  peace.  The  Christian  world  has  drawn  its 
inspiration  from  a  Life  that  has  seemed  to  it  the  fulfil- 
ment of  the  Platonic  and  Prophetic  dream — a  life  of 

1  Republic,  361  E  (Davies  and  Vaughan's  trans.) 


Hedonism  149 

transcendent  goodness,  which  was  also  a  life  of  utmost 
suffering,  of  suffering  even  unto  the  death  of  the  cross. 
We  must  indeed  believe  that  the  goal  of  moral  progress 
is  the  complete  coincidence  of  goodness  with  happiness. 
But  at  present  it  is  not  so,  and  the  lesson  of  the  best 
lives  is  that  the  way  to  that  goal  lies  through  suffering. 
Perhaps  we  cannot  understand  the  full  significance  of 
pain  in  relation  to  goodness ;  but  its  presence  in  all 
noble  lives  tells  of  a  higher  end  than  pleasure — of  an  end 
in  which  pleasure  may  be  taken  up  as  an  element,  but 
which  itself  is  infinitely  more,  of  an  end  faithfulness 
to  which  must  often  mean  indifference  to  pain,  or,  better 
even  than  indifference,  a  noble  willingness  to  bear  it  for 
the  sake  of  the  higher  good  which  may  not  otherwise  be 
reached,  for  the  sake  of  that  highest  life  which  is  not 
possible  save  through  the  death  of  all  that  is  lower  than 
itself. 

Sensibility  is  the  dynamic  of  the  moral  life,  its  efficient 
cause ;  it  is  not  the  final  cause  of  morality,  or  the  source 
of  the  moral  ideal.  Pleasure  is  not  the  true  object  of 
choice.  Though  the  true  choice  must  needs  be  pleasant, 
it  is  not  the  choice  of  pleasure.  The  idea — and  the  ideal 
— of  which  the  good  life  is  the  realisation  is  not  the  idea 
of  pleasure.  The  object  that  thrills  us  with  pleasure  as 
we  choose  it,  which  we  could  not  choose  if  it  did  not 
please  us,  is  itself  something  other  than  pleasure.  What 
it  is,  we  have  still  to  inquire.  But  we  must  next  con- 
sider the  anti-hedonistic  or  rationalistic  interpretation  of 
the  moral  ideal. 

LITERATURE. 

1.   EXPOSITOBT. 

(a)  Ancient  Hedonism. 

Zeller,  Socrates  and  the  Socratic  Schools,  chs.  vii.,  xiv. ;  Stoics,  Epicureans, 

and  Sceptics,  part  iii. 
W.  Wallace,  Epicureanism. 
W.  Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean. 


150  The  Moral  Ideal 

H.  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics,  ch.  ii.  §§  3,  4,  16,  17. 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  Eng.  trans.,  pp.  72-82,  85-87. 

(b)  Modern  Hedonism. 

Hume,  Enquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of  Morals;  Treatise  of  Human 

Nature,  bk.  iii. 

Paley,  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,  bks.  i.,  ii. 
Bentham,  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation. 
J.  S.  Mill,  Utilitarianism. 
H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  part  i. 
L.  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics. 

H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  chs.  13,  14  ;  bk.  iv. 
Gizycki,  A  Student's  Manual  of  Ethical  Philosophy,  Eng.  trans,  by  Stan  ton 
Coit. 

E.  Albee,  Articles  on  the  History  of  English  Utilitarianism,  Philosophical 

Review,  Nos.  21,  22,  25,  32,  34. 
H.  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics,  ch.  iv.  §§  14-17. 
Jodl,  Oeschichte  der  Ethik,  vol.  i.  pp.  205-211  (Paley),  228-243  (Hume); 

vol.  ii.  pp.  432-467  (Bentham  and  Mill). 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  part  v.  ch.  ii.  §  36. 

2.  CIUTICAL. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii.  ch,  iv.  (3rd  ed.) ;  on  Evolutionism, 

ch.  vii.  121-134. 
J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  i.  ;  on  Evolutionism,  bk. 

iii.  ch.  iii. 
J.  Dewey,  A  Study  of  Ethics,  pp.  41-68,  115-123  ;  Outlines  of  Ethics,  pp. 

14-78,  140-146. 

C.  F.  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  iii.  chs.  ii.,  iii.,  iv. 
J.  Watson,  Hedonistic  Theories. 
T.  H.  Green,  Introd.  to  Hume's  Treatise,  vol.  ii. ;  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk. 

iii.  ch.  iv.  §§  219-239  ;  bk.  iv.  ch.  iv. 

J.  Martineau,  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  vol.  ii.  part  ii.  bk.  ii.  chs.  i.,  ii. 
J.  G.  Schurman,  Ethical  Import  of  Darwinism. 

F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  Essays  iii.,  vii. 
T.  H.  Huxley,  Evolution  and  Ethics. 

C.  Douglas,  Ethics  of  J.  S.  Mill,  Introductory  Essays. 
H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii. 


151 


CHAPTEK    II. 

RATIONALISM,    OR   THE    ETHICS    OF   REASON. 

1.  The  rationalistic  point  of  view. — We  have  traced 
the  implicit  rationalism  of  the  hedonistic  theory  gradu- 
ally becoming  explicit  as  we  passed  from  Cyrenaicism 
to  Epicureanism,  from  Paley  and  Bentham  to  Mill 
and  Professor  Sidgwick.  This  appeal  to  reason  became 
necessary,  first,  for  the  guidance  of  individual  choice 
by  reference  to  a  criterion  of  the  higher  and  lower,  and 
even  of  the  greater  and  less,  in  pleasure ;  and,  secondly, 
as  the  only  possible  means  of  transition  from  egoism 
to  altruism,  from  selfishness  to  benevolence. 

But,  in  both  ancient  and  modern  times,  the  ethical 
rights  of  reason  have  been  emphasised  no  less  strongly, 
and  often  no  less  exclusively,  than  the  ethical  rights  of 
sensibility.  This  assertion  of  the  claims  of  reason  in  the 
life  of  a  rational  being  is  at  the  basis  of  the  common 
modern  antithesis,  or  at  any  rate  distinction,  between  duty 
and  pleasure,  between  virtue  and  prudence,  between  the 
right  and  the  expedient.  It  is  at  the  heart  of  the  con- 
viction that — 

u  To  live  by  law, 

Acting  the  law  we  live  by  without  fear  ; 
And  because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right 
Were  wisdom  in  the  scorn  of  consequence." 

In  ethical  theory,  too,  '  duty  for  duty's  sake '  has  been 
proclaimed   with   no   less   emphasis   than   'pleasure   for 


152  The  Moral  Ideal 

pleasure's  sake/  as  the  last  word  of  the  moral  life.  The 
effort  to  idealise  or  spiritualise  the  moral  man  has  been 
no  less  strenuously  pursued  than  the  effort  to  naturalise 
him.  In  reason,  rather  than  in  sensibility,  it  has  been 
maintained,  is  to  be  found  the  characteristic  element  of 
human  nature,  the  quality  which  differentiates  man  from 
all  lower  beings,  and  makes  him  man.  This  is  not  so 
much  an  explicit  theory  of  the  end  or  ideal,  as  a  vindi- 
cation of  the  absoluteness  of  moral  law  or  obligation,  of 
the  category  of  duty  as  the  supreme  ethical  category. 
But  it  is,  at  any  rate,  a  delineation  of  the  ideal  life,  and 
therefore,  implicitly  or  explicitly,  of  the  moral  ideal  itself. 

The  rational,  like  the  hedonistic,  ethics  takes  two 
forms — an  extreme  and  a  moderate.  The  former  is  that 
the  good  life  is  a  life  of  pure  reason,  from  which  all  sen- 
sibility has  been  eliminated.  The  latter  is  that  it  is  a 
life  which,  though  containing  sensibility  as  an  element, 
is  fundamentally  rational — a  life  of  sensibility  guided  by 
reason.  In  either  case,  the  entire  emphasis  is  laid  upon 
reason,  and  the  theory  may  be  called  rigoristic,  because 
the  attitude  to  sensibility  is  that  of  rational  superiority 
and  stern  control,  where  it  is  not  that  of  rational  intoler- 
ance and  exclusiveness.  Reason  claims  the  sovereignty, 
and  sensibility  is  either  outlawed,  or  degraded  to  the 
status  of  passive  obedience. 

Whether  in  its  extreme  or  in  its  moderate  form, 
Rationalism  is  the  expression  of  ethical  idealism,  as 
Hedonism  is  the  expression  of  ethical  realism.  The  one 
is  the  characteristic  temper  of  the  modern  Christian 
world,  as  the  other  is  the  characteristic  temper  of  the 
ancient  Classical  world.  Our  normal  and  dominant 
mood  is  that  of  strenuous  enthusiasm,  of  dissatisfaction 
with  the  actual,  of  aspiration  after  the  ideal ;  the  su- 
preme category  of  our  life  is  duty  or  oughtness.  The 
normal  and  dominant  mood  of  the  Greeks  was  just  the 
reverse, — the  mood  of  sunny  sensuous  contentment  with 
the  present  and  the  actual.  That  discontent  which  we 


Rationalism  153 

account  the  evidence  of  our  diviner  destiny  was  foreign 
to  their  spirit.  The  ethics  of  Socrates  is  the  philoso- 
phical expression  of  this  characteristic  Greek  view  of 
life ;  moderation  or  self-control  is  the  deepest  principle 
he  knows.  For  Aristotle,  too,  the  sum  of  all  virtue  is 
the  '  middle  way '  between  the  two  extremes  of  excess 
and  defect.  The  master-virtue  of  the  Greeks,  in  life  and 
in  theory,  is  a  universal  temperance  or  awfypoavvri. 

Yet  it  is  to  the  Greeks  that  we  must  trace  back  the 
rationalistic,  no  less  than  the  hedonistic,  view  of  life. 
For  the  Greek  mind,  though  sensuous,  was  always  clear 
and  rational,  always  lucid,  always  appreciative  of  form ; 
and  the  rational  life  had  therefore  always  a  peculiar 
charm  for  it.  This  appreciation  of  the  rational  life 
finds  expression  in  the  Socratic  ideal  of  human  life  as 
a  life  worthy  of  a  rational  being,  founded  in  rational 
insight  and  self-knowledge — a  life  that  leaves  the  soul 
not  demeaned  and  impoverished,  but  enriched  and  satis- 
fied, adorned  with  her  own  proper  jewels  of  righteousness 
and  truth.  Plato  and  Aristotle  follow  out  this  Socratic 
clue  of  the  identity  of  the  good  with  the  rational  life. 
For  both,  the  life  of  virtue  is  a  life  '  according  to  right 
reason/  and  the  vicious  life  is  the  irrational  life.  Both, 
however,  distinguish  two  degrees  of  rationality  in  what 
was,  for  Socrates,  a  single  life  of  reason.  First  there  is 
the  reason-guided  life  of  sensibility,  or  the  life  according 
to  reason ;  but  beyond  that  lies  the  higher  life  of  reason 
itself,  —  the  intellectual,  contemplative,  or  philosophic 
life.  The  chief  source  of  this  ethical  idealism  in  Greek 
philosophy,  which  was  destined  to  receive  such  a  remark- 
able development  in  the  Stoic  school,  and,  through  the 
Stoics,  in  our  modern  life  and  thought,  is  to  be  found  in 
Plato's  separation  of  the  ideal  reality  from  the  sensible 
appearance.  If,  however,  we  would  learn  the  original 
exposition  of  Greek  Eationalism,  we  must  go  back  to 
the  immediate  disciples  of  Socrates,  the  notorious  Cynic 
school. 


154  The  Moral  Ideal 

2.  (A)  Extreme  Rationalism,  (a)  Ancient :  (a) 
Cynicism. — The  quality  in  the  Socratic  character  which 
most  impressed  the  Cynics  was  its  perfect  self-control 
(ijKpaTiia),  its  sublime  independence  of  circumstances, 
its  complete  self-containedness  and  self-sufficiency.  This 
became  the  ideal  of  the  school.  Happiness,  they  main- 
tained, is  to  be  sought  within,  not  without ;  in  virtue  or 
excellence  of  character,  not  in  pleasure  (aura/jKrj  TJ/V 
aptrfiv  TTjoac  evSaifjioviav).  Wisdom  and  happiness  are 
synonymous,  and  the  life  of  the  wise  is  the  passionless 
life  of  reason.  The  life  of  pleasure  is  the  life  of  folly, 
the  wise  man  would  rather  be  mad  than  pleased.  For 
pleasure  makes  man  the  slave  of  fortune,  the  servant  of 
circumstance.  Independence  is  to  be  purchased  only 
by  indifference  to  pleasure  and  pain,  by  insensibility 
(airadfia),  by  the  uprooting  of  the  desires  which  bind  us 
to  outward  things.  There  must  be  no  rifts  in  the  armour 
of  the  soul,  through  which  the  darts  of  fortune  may 
strike :  the  man  who  has  killed  out  all  desire  is  alone 
impenetrable  by  evil.  But  the  wise  man  is  impenetrable. 
Not  without,  but  within  the  soul,  are  the  issues  of  life. 
Desire  binds  us  to  that  which  is  external,  and  foreign 
(Eewicov)  to  the  soul.  But  "for  each  thing  that  alone  can 
be  a  good  which  belongs  to  it,  and  the  only  thing  which 
belongs  to  man  is  mind  or  reason  "  (voue,  Aoyoe).  This 
man's  proper  inner  good,  outward  evil  cannot  touch ;  as 
Socrates  said,  "  no  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man." 
Without  such  virtue,  nothing  is  good ;  with  it,  there  is 
no  evil.  This  is  the  constant  text  of  Cynic  morality — 
the  supremacy  of  the  human  spirit  over  circumstance, 
its  perfect  mastery  of  its  own  fortunes,  founded  on 
the  sovereignty  of  reason  over  passion.  The  sum  of 
Cynic  wisdom  is  the  sublime  pride  of  the  masterful 
rational  self,  which  can  acknowledge  no  other  rule  than 
its  own,  and  which  makes  its  possessor  a  king  in  a 
world  of  slaves. 

But  these  '  counsels  of  perfection '  are  hard  to  follow. 


Rationalism  155 

The  life  of  -wisdom  is  a  veritable  'choice  of  Hercules.' 
The-  true  riches  of  the  soul  are  to  be  purchased  only 
by  selling  all  the  deceitful  riches  of  pleasure ;  the  one 
pathway  to  heaven  is  the  beggar-life.  The  emancipation 
from  the  outward  is  difficult,  and  the  Cynic  rule  of  life 
is  one  long  course  of  self-denial.  We  must  reduce  our 
wants  to  a  minimum,  we  must  extirpate  all  artificial, 
luxurious,  and  conventional  needs,  and  return  to  the 
simplicity  of  nature.  Better  far  to  climb  with  staff 
and  scrip  the  steep  ascent  of  virtue,  than,  burdened 
with  wealth  and  houses  and  lands,  to  remain  in  the 
City  of  Destruction.  For  the  reward  of  such  self- 
denial  is  a  perfect  peace  of  mind,  which  nothing  can 
perturb.  The  man  who  has  attained  to  the  wisdom  of 
life  has  penetrated  all  illusions,  and  conquered  death 
itself;  if  none  of  the  experiences  of  life  are  truly  evil, 
since  they  cannot  touch  the  soul  that  has  steeled  itself 
in  an  armour  of  indifference,  least  of  all  is  that  an  evil 
which  is  not  an  experience  at  all. 

This  pride  of  reason  led  the  Cynics  into  strange  ex- 
travagance and  fanaticism.  Their  'return  to  nature,' 
their  scorn  for  public  opinion,  their  self-conscious  affecta- 
tions, their  lack  of  personal  dignity,  their  contempt  for 
their  fellows,  whom  they,  like  Carlyle,  regarded  as  '  mostly 
fools,'  have  become  proverbial.  Yet  Cynicism  is  no  mere 
irresponsible  or  unimportant  vagary  of  the  human  mind. 
It  is  the  first  philosophical  expression,  among  the  Greeks, 
of  that  tendency  with  which  we  have  since  become  so 
familiar, — the  tendency  to  see  in  the  life  of  reason  the 
only  life  worthy  of  a  rational  being,  and  in  all  natural 
sensibility  a  trap  laid  for  the  soul  of  man,  in  which  he 
will  be  snared  if  he  avoids  it  not  altogether;  it  is  the 
first  and  the  most  extreme  expression  of  the  ascetic  prin- 
ciple. That  principle  was  reasserted  later,  by  the  Stoics, 
with  such  impressiveness  and  dignity  that  the  importance 
and  originality  of  its  earlier  statement  have  perhaps  been 
under-estimated. 


156  The  Moral  Ideal 

(/3)  Stoicism. — The  Greeks  do  not  appear  to  have 
taken  the  Cynics  seriously ;  much  had  to  occur  in  their 
experience  before  they  were  ready  to  accept  that  lesson 
of  self-discipline  which  had  been  the  burden  of  the  Cynic 
school.  The  course  of  the  moral  life  ran  very  smooth  in 
those  prosperous  city-states ;  it  was  not  difficult  to  live  a 
harmonious,  measured,  rhythmic  life  in  such  conditions. 
And  the  Greek  spirit  was  always  aesthetic  rather  than 
ethical,  the  category  of  its  life  was  always  the  beautiful 
rather  than  the  good.  Not  until  the  jar  came  from  with- 
out, not  until  the  fair  civil  order  broke  down,  was  the 
discord  felt,  or  the  need  of  a  more  perfect  and  a  diviner 
order,  and  salvation  sought  in  conformity  to  its  higher 
law.  Then  men  remembered  the  wistful  note  which  had 
been  struck  by  Plato,  and  by  Aristotle  too, — how  both 
had  spoken  of  another  life  than  that  of  this  world,  and 
they  were  willing  to  listen  to  the  Stoics  as  they  repeated 
the  old  Cynic  doctrine.  Stoicism  differed  from  Cynicism 
in  several  important  particulars : — 

(1)  For  the  crude  '  naturalism '  of  the  Cynics,  the 
Stoics  substitute  a  strictly  idealistic  or  transcendental 
view  of  life.  The  ideal  life  of  Plato  and  Aristotle — 
the  life  of  reason  itself — they  regard  as  the  only  life 
worthy  of  man.  The  old  Cynic  phrase,  '  life  according 
to  nature '  (o/noXojov^ivw^  ry  <j>van  %fjv),  thus  receives, 
for  the  Stoics,  a  new  meaning.  For  in  nature  (0o<r«e) 
— whether  the  nature  of  things  or  their  own  nature 
— they  find,  with  Heraclitus,  a  common  reason  (Xoyoc) 
and  a  common  law  (vo^oe).  They  are  thus  able  to 
identify  the  rational  life  with  the  life  'according  to 
nature,'  and  both  with  the  life  '  according  to  law.'  They 
do  not,  like  the  Cynics,  fly  in  the  face  of  custom  and  con- 
vention; the  common  reason  has  for  them  taken  shape 
and  embodiment  in  the  established  laws  and  usages  of 
human  society,  and  conformity,  rather  than  non-con- 
formity, becomes  man's  duty.  Not  emancipation  from 
law,  but  the  discovery  of  the  true  law  of  man's  life 


Rationalism  157 

and  obedience  to  that  law,  is  the  object  of  the  Stoics' 
aspiration.  In  this  sense,  the  Stoics  are  at  once  realists 
and  idealists :  for  them  '  the  real  is  the  rational.'  And, 
although  they  too  counsel  indifference  and  callousness  to 
the  events  of  fortune  and  the  changing  circumstances  of 
human  life,  their  resignation  to  the  course  of  things  is 
supported  by  the  conviction  that  '  all  things  work  to- 
gether for  good,'  that  what  happens  is  always  most  fit, 
and  that  it  becomes  man  to  accept  as  such  all  the  events 
of  life  and  the  grand  event  of  death  itself.  The  part 
must  not  seek  to  separate  itself  from  the  whole,  or  mis- 
take itself  for  the  whole.  "  Nothing  can  happen  to  me 
which  is  not  best  for  thee,  0  Universe."  • 

(2)  For  the  sheer  individualism  of  the  Cynics,  Sto- 
icism offers  to  man  a  new  and  nobler  citizenship  than 
that  of  any  earthly  State.  The  Stoic  cosmopolitanism 
or  citizenship  of  the  world  is  no  merely  negative  con- 
ception. It  is  true  that  the  Stoics  are  individualists,  and 
that  their  ideal  life  is  self-contained  and  self-sufficient. 
This  aspect  of  the  Cynic  ideal  they  reassert.  But  their 
emancipation  from  the  narrow  limits  of  the  Greek  State 
gives  them  a  spiritual  entrance  into  a  larger  and  nobler 
society,  a  '  city  of  God,'  the  universal  kingdom  of  human- 
ity itself.  On  the  earth  that  true  city  is  not  found ;  it  is 
not,  like  Plato's,  a  '  Greek  city,'  but  a  spiritual  State,  and 
the  Stoic  citizenship  is  in  the  heavens.  It  is  like  Kant's 
'  kingdom  of  intelligence,'  in  which  each  citizen  is  at  once 
sovereign  and  subject,  for  its  law  is  the  law  of  reason 
itself.  "  'O  Koajjiog  uxravEt  iroXtg  t<mv — the  world  is  as  it 
were  a  commonwealth,  a  city ;  and  there  are  observances, 
customs,  usages  actually  current  in  it — things  our  friends 
and  companions  will  expect  of  us,  as  the  condition  of 
our  living  there  with  them  at  all,  as  really  their  peers 
or  fellow-citizens.  Those  observances  were,  indeed,  the 
creation  of  a  visible  or  invisible  aristocracy  in  it,  whose 
actual  manners,  whose  preferences  from  of  old,  become 
now  a  weighty  tradition,  as  to  the  way  in  which  things 


158  The  Moral  Ideal 

should  be  or  not  be  done,  are  like  a  music,  to  which  the 
intercourse  of  life  proceeds — such  a  music  as  no  one  who 
had  once  caught  its  harmonies  would  willingly  jar.  In 
this  way,  the  becoming,  as  the  Greeks — or  manners,  as 
both  Greeks  and  Romans  said,  would  indeed  be  a  com- 
prehensive term  for  duty.  Eighteousness  would  be,  in 
the  words  of  the  Caesar  himself,  but  the  '  following  of  the 
reasonable  will  and  ordinance  of  the  oldest,  the  most 
venerable,  of  all  cities  and  polities — the  reasonable  will 
of  the  royal,  the  law-giving  element  in  it — forasmuch  as 
we  are  citizens  of  that  supreme  city  on  high,  of  which  all 
other  cities  beside  are  but  as  single  habitations.' " 

(3)  But  the  failure  to  find  on  earth  any  counterpart  of 
that  fair  city  in  the  heavens,  bred  in  the  Stoics  a  new 
melancholy  which  was  strange  to  the  buoyant  spirit  of 
the  earlier  Greeks.  Not  that  the  Stoics  are  pessimists. 
The  Cynics  were  pessimists,  but  their  pessimism  seemed 
to  give  them  much  satisfaction  in  the  added  sense  of 
their  own  superiority.  The  Stoics,  on  the  contrary,  are 
optimists ;  idealism  is  always  optimistic.  All  things  are, 
truly  understood,  most  fit :  rational  order  pervades  the 
universe.  But  the  shadow  of  the  ideal  and  supersensible 
lies  upon  the  actual  and  sensible ;  the  shadow  of  eternity 
is  cast  athwart  the  world  of  time.  The  soul  that  has 
beheld  the  abiding  reality  is  possessed  by  the  sense  of 
the  utter  insignificance  and  transitoriness  of  all  temporal 
interests,  and  sees  in  all  things  the  seeds  of  quick  decay 
and  dissolution.  There  is  an  inevitable  melancholy  in 
such  a  complete  disillusionment;  the  nil  admirari  spirit 
cannot  allow  itself  to  rejoice  in  anything.  Its  cry  is  for 
rest  and  peace,  cessation  from  futile  striving.  Vanitas 
vanitatum !  The  wise  man  has  awakened  from  life's 
fevered  dream,  and  broken  the  spell  of  all  its  illusions. 
His  is  the  quiet  and  imperturbable  dignity  of  spirit  that 
goes  not  well  with  mirth  or  vulgar  enjoyment.  To  him 
death  is  more  welcome  than  life,  seeing  it  is  the  way  out 

1  Walter  Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  vol.  ii.  pp.  15,  16. 


Rationalism  159 

of  time  into  eternity.  "  I  find  that  all  things  are  now  as 
they  were  in  the  days  of  our  buried  ancestors — all  things 
sordid  in  their  elements,  trite  by  long  usage,  and  yet 
ephemeral.  How  ridiculous,  then,  how  like  a  country- 
man in  town,  is  he  who  wonders  at  aught !  Doth  the 
sameness,  the  repetition  of  the  public  shows,  weary  thee  ? 
Even  so  doth  that  likeness  of  events  make  the  spectacle 
of  the  world  a  vapid  one.  And  so  must  it  be  with  thee 
to  the  end.  For  the  wheel  of  the  world  hath  ever  the 
same  motion,  upward  and  downward,  from  generation 
to  generation.  When,  then,  shall  time  give  place  to 
eternity  ?  "  "  To  cease  from  action — the  ending  of 
thine  effort  to  think  and  to  do — there  is  no  evil  in  that. 
.  .  .  Thou  climbedst  into  the  ship,  thou  hast  made  thy 
voyage  and  touched  the  shore ;  go  forth  now !  Be  it 
into  some  other  life;  the  divine  breath  is  everywhere, 
even  there.  Be  it  into  forgetfulness  for  ever;  at  least 
thou  wilt  rest  from  the  beating  of  sensible  images 
upon  thee,  from  the  passions  which  pluck  thee  this 
way  and  that,  like  an  unfeeling  toy,  from  those  long 
marches  of  the  intellect,  from  thy  toilsome  ministry  to 
the  flesh."2 

Thus  the  Stoic  life  is  a  life  of  pure  reason,  in  which  no 
place  is  found  for  natural  sensibility.  It  is  founded  on 
the  Platonic  dualism  of  form  and  matter,  of  the  ideal  and 
the  sensible,  as  well  as  on  the  psychological  dualism,  com- 
mon to  both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  of  the  rational  and  the 
irrational.  The  maxim,  Live  according  to  nature,  means  : 
Live  according  to  that  rational  order  which  is  the  deepest 
nature  of  things.  Let  the  Logos  which  reveals  itself  in 
the  universe  reveal  itself  also  in  thee,  who  art  a  part  of 
the  universe.  As  for  the  life  of  passion  and  sensibility, 
that  is  essentially  a  lawless  and  capricious  life.  The 
animal  may  fittingly  obey  its  claim,  and  submit  to  its 
slavery.  But  thou,  who  canst  think,  who  canst  enter  into 
and  make  thine  own  possession  the  rational  order  of  the 

1  Walter  Pater,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i.  p.  205.  2  Ibid.,  vol.  i.  p.  206. 


160  The  Moral  Ideal 

universe,  art  surely  called  upon  to  follow  the  leading  of 
that  superior  insight,  and  to  conduct  thyself  in  all  thy 
doings  as  a  sharer  in  the  univeral  reason.  Nor  is  it 
only  needful  that  thou  regulate  and  be  master  of  thy 
feelings,  thou  must  be  absolutely  emancipated  from  them. 
No  harmony  of  the  rational  and  the  irrational  elements 
is  possible,  such  as  Plato  fondly  dreamed  of ;  there  must 
be  war  to  the  knife,  and  no  quarter  given  to  the  enemy 
of  the  soul,  if  the  soul  is  to  live.  Feeling  is  the  bond 
that  ties  thee  to  the  external,  to  what  is  not  thyself — nay, 
to  what  is  not  not  all,  to  the  shadows  and  illusions  and 
make-believes,  to  the  lie  and  not  to  the  truth.  Feeling 
makes  thee  the  slave  of  circumstance  and  fortune.  Thou 
must  assert  thine  independence  of  all  outside  thyself,  and 
learn  to  be  self-contained  and  at  home  with  thyself ;  and 
thou  canst  only  be  so  by  living  the  life  of  reason,  and 
obeying  in  all  things  and  with  a  single  mind  its  uncom- 
promising law.  Therein  lies  thy  proper  good ;  all  else 
is  in  reality  indifferent,  and  must  become  so  to  thee,  if 
thou  wouldst  attain  the  peace  and  completeness  of  the 
good  life.  With  the  true  wisdom  of  rational  insight  into 
the  eternal  substance  of  things  will  come  '  apathy '  to  all 
the  interests  of  time — mere  'shadow-shapes  that  come 
and  go,'  and  the  emancipated  spirit  will  lay  hold  on  the 
eternal  life  of  the  universal  reason. 

It  was  not  among  the  Greeks  themselves,  but  in  the 
larger  Eoman  and  Christian  worlds,  that  Stoicism  was  to 
come  to  its  real  influence  upon  mankind.  The  Eomans 
seemed  to  themselves  to  have  realised  the  Stoic  dream  of 
a  universal  empire  of  humanity,  and  in  the  '  natural  law ' 
of  the  Porch  they  found  a  theoretic  basis  for  their  splen- 
did jurisprudence.  So  powerfully  did  its  stern  ideal  of 
life  appeal  to  the  characteristic  severitas  of  the  Eoman 
mind,  that  Stoicism  found  at  Eome  a  new  life,  and  its 
finest  achievements  are  Eoman  rather  than  Greek.  It  is, 
however,  through  the  medium  of  Christianity  that  Stoicism 
has  chiefly  influenced  the  modern  world. 


Rationalism  161 

3.  (b)  Modern  :  (a)  Christian  asceticism. — The  funda- 
mental idea  of  Christianity  is  the  idea  of  the  divine  right- 
eousness, with  its  absolute  claim  upon  the  life  of  man. 
This  idea  was  the  inheritance  of  Christianity  from  the 
Hebrews,  but  it  was  reasserted  with  a  new  emphasis  and 
a  new  rigour :  "  except  your  righteousness  shall  exceed  the 
righteousness  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no 
case  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  It  is  a  righteous- 
ness not  of  external  act  or  observance,  but  of  the  inner 
man,  a  righteousness  of  heart  and  will  And  though  the 
Founder  of  Christianity  did  not,  by  word  or  life,  inculcate 
an  ascetic  ideal,  but  gave  his  ungrudging  sanction  to  all 
the  natural  joys  of  life,  his  uncompromising  attitude  to- 
wards unrighteousness  meant  inevitably,  for  himself  and 
for  his  disciples,  suffering,  self-sacrifice,  and  death.  The 
essential  spirit  of  the  Christian  life  is  the  spirit  of  the 
cross.  It  is  out  of  the  death  of  the  natural  man  that  the 
spiritual  life  is  born.  "  Strait  is  the  gate,  and  narrow  is 
the  way,  that  leadeth  unto  life."  The  way  of  the  Christian 
life  is  the  way  of  the  Master,  the  way  of  utter  self-sacri- 
fice :  "  he  that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he  that 
loseth  his  life  shall  find  it."  The  natural  life  of  sensi- 
bility is  not  in  itself  evil,  but  it  must  be  perfectly 
mastered  and  possessed  by  the  rational  spirit.  If  it 
offends  the  spirit's  life — and  it  may  offend  at  any  point 
— it  must  be  denied.  "  If  thy  right  eye  offend  thee,  pluck 
it  out,  and  cast  it  from  thee :  for  it  is  better  for  thee  that 
one  of  thy  members  should  perish,  and  not  that  thy  whole 
body  should  be  cast  into  hell.  And  if  thy  right  hand 
offend  thee,  cut  it  off,  and  cast  it  from  thee  :  for  it  is  pro- 
fitable for  thee  that  one  of  thy  members  should  perish, 
and  not  that  thy  whole  body  should  be  cast  into  hell."  So 
exacting  is  the  Christian  ideal  of  righteousness. 

We  know  how  this  moral  rigour  of  Christianity  was 
developed  by  its  disciples  into  an  asceticism  of  life,  in 
which  the  Stoic  '  apathy '  was  reproduced  and  given  a  new 
ethical  significance.  Not  to  save  himself  from  the  attack? 

L 


162  The  Moral  Ideal 

of  a  capricious  and  often  evil  fate,  but  to  save  the  spirit's 
life  from  the  snares  of  the  tempting  flesh,  is  man  called 
upon  to  eradicate  all  desire.  For  the  flesh,  as  such,  is 
antagonistic  to  the  spirit,  and  matter  is  essentially  evil. 
The  thought  of  this  ethical  dualism — this  home- sickness 
of  the  soul  for  the  ideal  world  whence  it  had  fallen  into 
this  lower  life  of  sense  and  time — came  to  the  Christian 
Church,  as  it  had  come  to  the  Stoics,  from  Plato.  To  Plato 
all  education  had  been  a  process  of  purification,  a  gradual 
recovery  of  what  at  birth  man  lost,  an  ever  more  perfect 
'  reminiscence '  of  the  upper  world.  There  is  man's  true 
home ;  not  here,  in  the  cave  of  sensibility,  the  soul's  sad 
prison-house.  If  this  thought  never  took  hold  of  the 
Greeks  themselves,  we  know  how  potent  it  was  with  the 
Neo-platonists  and  with  the  mediaeval  saints  and  mystics. 
The  mediaeval  world  was  a  world  of  thought  and  aspira- 
tion, of  '  divine  discontent '  with  the  actual,  an  eternal 
world  in  which  no  room  was  found  for  the  interests  of 
time,  a  world  of  contemplation  rather  than  of  activity. 
Of  this  spirit  the  characteristic  product  was  Monasticism, 
with  its  effort  to  detach  the  spirit  from  the  flesh,  its  sep- 
aration from  the  world,  and  its  vows  of  chastity,  poverty, 
and  obedience.  The  monk  dies  as  an  individual  with 
ends  of  his  own,  as  a  man  and  a  citizen,  and  becomes  the 
devotee  of  the  universal  and  divine  end,  as  he  conceives 
it :  all  '  secular  '  interests  are  lost  in  the  '  religious.'  Nor 
did  Christian  asceticism  pass  away  with  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  survives  not  only  in  contemporary  Catholicism, 
but,  to  a  large  extent,  in  the  life  of  Protestantism  as  well. 
Christianity  is  still  apt  to  be  '  other- worldly,'  to  regard 
this  life  as  merely  a  pilgrimage,  and  a  preparation  for 
that  better  life  which  will  begin  with  the  separation  of 
the  spirit  from  the  body  of  its  humiliation,  to  regard  time 
as  but  'the  lackey  to  eternity/  to  think  that  here  we 
have  only  the  preface,  there  the  volume  of  our  life,  here 
the  prelude,  there  the  music.  Accounting  his  citizenship 
to  be  in  the  heavenly  and  eternal  world,  and  preoccupied 


Rationalism  163 

with  its  affairs,  the  Christian  saint  is  apt  to  sit  loose  to 
the  things  of  time,  and  to  cultivate  an  aloofness  and 
apathy  of  spirit  no  less  real  than  that  of  Stoic  sage  or 
mediaeval  monk. 

4.  (/3)  Kantian  transcendentalism.  —  The  great 
modern  representative,  in  ethical  thought,  of  the  ex- 
treme or  ascetic  form  of  Eationalism  is  Kant,  the  author 
of  one  of  the  most  impressive  moral  idealisms  of  all 
time.  For  Kant  the  good — the  only  thing  absolute  and 
altogether  good — is  the  good  will.  And  the  good  will  is, 
for  him,  the  rational  will,  the  will  obedient  to  the  law  of 
the  universal  reason.  It  is  the  prerogative  of  a  rational 
being  to  be  self-legislative.  The  animal  life  is  one  of 
heteronomy ;  the  course  of  its  activity  is  dictated  by  ex- 
ternal stimuli  And  if  man  had  been  a  merely  sentient 
being,  and  pleasure  his  end,  nature  would  have  managed 
his  life  for  him  as  she  manages  the  animal's,  by  provid- 
ing him  with  the  necessary  instincts.  The  peculiarity  of 
man's  life  is  that  it  belongs  to  two  spheres.  As  a  sen- 
sible being,  man  is  a  member  of  the  animal  sphere,  whose 
law  is  pleasure  ;  as  a  rational  being,  he  enacts  upon  him- 
self the  higher  law  of  reason  which  takes  no  account  of 
sensibility.  Hence  arises  for  him  the  categorical  impera- 
tive of  duty — the  '  thou  shalt '  of  the  rational  being  to 
the  irrational  or  sentient.  As  a  rational  being,  man 
demands  of  himself  a  life  which  shall  be  reason's  own 
creation,  whose  spring  shall  be  found  in  pure  reverence 
for  the  law  of  his  rational  nature.  Inclination  and  desire 
are  necessarily  subjective  and  particular ;  and,  in  so  far 
as  they  enter,  they  detract  from  the  ethical  value  of  the 
action.  Nor  do  consequences  come  within  the  province 
of  morality;  the  goodness  is  determined  solely  by  the 
inner  rational  form  of  the  act.  The  categorical  quality 
of  the  imperative  of  morality  is  founded  on  the  abso- 
lute worth  of  that  nature  whose  law  it  is.  A  rational 
being  is,  as  such,  an  end-in-himself,  and  may  not  regard 


164  Hie  Moral  Ideal 

himself  as  a  means  to  any  other  end.  He  must  act 
always  in  one  way — namely,  so  as  to  fulfil  his  rational 
nature;  he  may  never  use  his  reason  as  a  means  by 
which  to  compass  non-rational  ends.  The  law  of  his  life 
is  :  "  So  act  as  to  regard  humanity,  whether  in  thine  own 
person  or  in  that  of  another,  always  as  an  end,  never  as 
a  means." 

The  moral  law  thus  becomes  for  Kant  the  gateway  of 
the  noumenal  life.  As  subject  to  its  categorical  impera- 
tive, man  is  a  member  of  the  intelligible  or  supersensible 
world — the  world  of  pure  reason.  From  that  higher 
vantage-ground,  he  sees  the  entire  empirical  life  dis- 
appear, as  the  mere  shadow  or  husk  of  moral  reality. 
As  moral,  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being  in  that 
noumenal  world  from  which,  as  intellectual,  he  is  for  ever 
shut  out.  As  he  listens  to  the  voice  of  duty,  and  con- 
cedes the  absolute  and  uncompromising  severity  of  its 
claim  upon  his  life,  he  '  feels  that  he  is  greater  than  he 
knows/  and  welcomes  it  as  the  business  of  his  life  to 
appropriate  his  birthright,  and  to  constitute  himself  in- 
deed, what  in  idea  he  is  from  the  first,  a  member  and 
a  citizen  of  the  intelligible  world.  There  too  he  finds 
the  goodly  fellowship  of  universal  intelligence,  and  be- 
comes at  once  subject  and  sovereign  in  the  kingdom  of 
pure  reason. 

5.  Criticism  of  extreme  Rationalism,  and  transi- 
tion to  moderate. — Such  are  the  chief  forms  of  Ration- 
alism, in  its  extreme  type,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 
how  the  fundamental  defects  of  such  a  view  of  life 
necessitated  the  transition  to  the  more  moderate  form  of 
the  theory. 

(1)  The  view  rests  upon  an  absolute  psychological 
dualism  of  reason  and  sensibility,  of  the  rational  and  the 
irrational.  Because  reason  differentiates  man  from  the 
animal,  and  his  life  must  therefore  be  a  rational  life, 
it  is  inferred  that  all  the  animal  sensibility  must  be 


Rationalism  165 

eliminated.  The  result  is  an  intellectualising  of  the 
moral  life, — the  identification  of  goodness  with  wisdom, 
of  virtue  with  knowledge,  of  duty  with  rational  con- 
sistency, of  practical  activity  with  philosophic  contem- 
plation. But  this  passionless  life  of  reason  is  not  the 
life  of  man  as  we  know  him.  We  cannot  summarily 
dismiss  the  entire  life  of  sensibility  as  irrational.  With- 
out sensibility  there  is  no  activity ;  the  moral  life,  as  such, 
implies  feeling. 

(2)  If  we  dismiss  feeling,  we  lose  the  entire  material 
of  morality,  and  what  is  left  is  only  its  empty  form.  It 
is  notorious  that  the  Kantian  ethics  are  .purely  formal, 
giving  us  the  sine  qud  non  of  the  good  life,  but  not  the 
very  face  and  lineaments  of  goodness  itself.  By  identi- 
fying will  with  practical  reason,  and  by  demanding  that 
the  motive  of  all  activity  shall  be  found  within  reason, 
it  provides  at  most  the  mere  form  of  will, — a  '  will  that 
wills  itself,'  a  logical  intellect  rather  than  a  good  will. 
The  ideal  life  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  is  confessedly  a 
purely  intellectual  or  speculative  life.  But  the  flesh 
and  blood  of  moral  reality  come  from  sensibility.  It 
has  been  truly  said  that  the  movement  of  the  real  world 
is  not  '  a  ghostly  ballet  of  bloodless  categories ; '  no 
more  is  the  movement  of  human  life.  In  its  dance, 
reason  and  sensibility  must  be  partners,  even  though 
they  often  quarrel ;  nay,  their  true  destiny  is  a  wedded 
life,  in  which  no  permanent  divorce  is  possible.  That 
feeling  is  simply  irrational,  and  incapable  of  becom- 
ing an  element  in  the  life  of  a  rational  being,  is  sheer 
mysticism ;  and  mysticism  in  ethics  is  no  less  false  than 
mysticism  in  metaphysics.  To  deny  the  reality  of  any 
element  of  the  real  world,  and  to  refuse  to  deal  with  it, 
— that  is  the  essence  of  mysticism.  The  very  problem 
of  the  moralist  is  set  for  him  by  the  existence  of  this 
dualism  of  reason  and  sensibility  in  human  nature,  and 
of  this  alternative  possibility,  in  human  life,  of  guidance 
by  feeling  or  guidance  by  reason.  To  eliminate  or  to 


166  The  Moral  Ideal 

disparage  either  element,  to  destroy  the  alternative  moral 
possibility,  is  to  cut  the  knot  of  life's  great  riddle  rather 
than  to  unravel  it. 

An  implicit  acknowledgment  of  this  necessity  of  feel- 
ing, if  the  ends  of  reason  are  to  take  body  and  shape, 
and  to  find  their  actual  realisation,  is  made  by  Kant 
when,  after  excluding  all  '  pathological  inclination,'  that 
is,  all  empirical  sensibility,  he  brings  back  sensibility  it- 
self in  the  form  of  'pure  or  practical  interest.'1  The 
moral  law,  he  finds,  demands  for  its  realisation  a  spring 
or  motive-force  in  sensibility ;  only,  the  feeling  must  be 
the  offspring  of  reason.  The  psychological  distinction  of 
reason  and  sensibility  is,  however,  clearly  admitted,  as 
well  as  the  ethical  consequence  that  both  must  enter  as 
factors  into  the  life  of  will.  Plato  and  Aristotle  may  be 
said  to  make  the  same  concession,  in  their  description  of 
ordinary  '  moral '  or  '  practical '  virtue  as  the  excellence 
of  the  compound  nature  of  man,  mixed  of  reason  and 
irrational  sensibility.  This  life  of  feeling  controlled 
by  reason,  they  both  seem  to  say,  is  the  characteristic 
life  of  man,  though  the  higher  and  divine  life  may  be 
attained  at  intervals,  and  ought  never  to  be  lost  sight  of 
as  the  ideal. 

(3)  One  phase  of  the  problem  seems  to  have  been 
entirely  ignored  by  the  school  whose  views  we  are  con- 
sidering—  namely,  that  it  is  through  sensibility  that 
we  are  delivered  from  ourselves  and  find  the  way  to 
that  fellowship  with  mankind  which  the  Stoics  so  im- 
pressively portray,  and  which  Kant  contemplates  in  his 
'  kingdom  of  ends.'  '  Cool  reason  '  is  not  a  sufficient  bond ; 
we  must  feel  our  unity  with  our  fellows.  Though  reason 
is  universal,  the  ethics  of  pure  reason  are  inevitably 
individualistic.  The  Stoic  and  the  Kantian  life,  the 
ascetic  life,  is  essentially  self-contained ;  it  is  a  life 
which  withdraws  into  itself.  Its  dream  of  a  kingdom 
of  universal  intelligence,  of  a  city  of  God,  of  a  com- 

1  Cf.  Dewey,  Outlines  of  Ethics,  p.  86. 


Rationalism  167 

munion  of  saints,  remains  for  it  a  dream  which  can 
never  be  realised  on  earth.  The  bands  that  unite  us 
with  our  fellows  are  bands  of  love  ;  reason,  alone,  is 
clear  in  its  insight  into  the  common  nature  and  the 
common  weal,  but  powerless  to  realise  it.  The  dynamic 
of  the  moral  life  is  found  in  sensibility.  Kill  out  sen- 
sibility, and  you  not  only  impoverish  your  own  life,  but 
you  separate  yourself  from  your  fellows  no  less  thoroughly 
than  does  the  egoistic  Hedonist. 

(4)  Nor  is  self-sacrifice  the  last  word  of  morality  to 
any  part  of  our  nature,  although  it  may  be  its  first  word 
to  every  part  of  that  nature.  It  is  only  a  moment  in 
the  ethical  life, — one  phase  of  its  most  subtle  process, 
not  its  be-all  and  its  end-all.  The  true  life  of  man 
must  be  the  life  of  the  total,  single  self,  rational  and 
sentient ;  the  sentient  self  is  to  be  sacrificed,  only  as  it 
opposes  itself  to  the  deeper  and  truer  human  self  of 
reason.  The  sentient  self  is  not,  as  such,  evil  or  irra- 
tional, and  it  may  be  completely  harmonised  with  the 
rational  self.  The  ascetic  ideal  is  thoroughly  false  and 
inadequate,  and  must  always  be  corrected  by  the  he- 
donistic. It  is  an  ideal  of  death  rather  than  of  life,  of 
inactivity  rather  than  of  activity.  It  is  not  right  that 
the  ruddy  bloom  of  youth  and  health  should  be  all 
'sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,'  that  the 
thrill  of  quickened  life  should  be  stilled  and  deadened 
to  the  stately  march  of  reason  in  the  soul,  and  that 
apathy  and  insensibility  should  take  the  place  of  the 
eager  pulsing  life  of  nature  in  the  human  heart.  The 
spectacle  of  the  world  is  always  fresh  and  fascinating, 
and  we  should  keep  our  eyes  bright  to  see  it.  The  music 
of  life  need  never  grow  monotonous,  and  our  ears  should 
be  alert  to  catch  its  strains.  Life  is  life,  and  we  should 
not  make  it  a  meditatio  mortis.  Its  banquet  is  richly 
spread,  and  we  should  enjoy  it  with  a  full  heart,  nor  see 
the  death's  head  ever  at  the  feast.  Aloofness  of  spirit 
from  the  world  and  all  its  eager  crowding  human  interests 


168  The  Moral  Ideal 

is  not  in  the  end  the  noblest  attitude.  The  body  is  not 
to  be  thought  of  as  the  prison-house  of  the  soul,  from 
which  it  must  escape  if  it  would  live  in  its  own  true 
element.  Escape  it  cannot,  if  it  would.  The  spirit  and 
the  flesh  cannot  cut  adrift  from  one  another;  each  has 
its  own  lesson  for  its  fellow.  The  way  to  all  human 
goodness  lies  in  learning  '  the  value  and  significance  of 
flesh.'  The  passionless  life  of  reason  strikes  cold  and 
hard  on  the  human  heart : 

"  But  is  a  calm  like  this,  in  truth, 
The  crowning  end  of  life  and  youth. 
And  when  this  boon  rewards  the  dead, 
Are  all  debts  paid,  has  all  been  said  1 

Ah  no,  the  bliss  youth  dreams  is  one 
For  daylight,  for  the  cheerful  sun, 
For  feeling  nerves  and  living  breath — 
Youth  dreams  a  bliss  on  this  side  death. 
It  dreams  a  rest,  if  not  more  deep, 
More  grateful  than  this  marble  sleep ; 
It  hears  a  voice  within  it  tell : 
Calm's  not  lifts  crown,  though  calm  is  well 
'Tis  all  perhaps  which  man  requires, 
But  'tis  not  what  our  youth  desires." 1 

(5)  The  Stoic  and  the  Kantian  view  of  life  rests,  as 
we  have  seen,  upon  a  metaphysical  idealism  which  finds 
no  place  for  the  reality  of  the  sensible  and  phenomenal 
world :  it  is  the  expression  of  a  metaphysical,  as  well  as 
of  a  psychological,  dualism.  Such  is  the  cleft  between 
these  two  worlds  that  the  one  cannot  enter  into  relation 
with  the  other,  and  withdrawal  into  the  noumenal  world 
of  pure  reason  becomes  the  only  path  to  the  true  or 
ideal  life.  The  entire  life  of  sensibility  is  disparaged 
and  despised  as  shadowy  and  unreal,  a  dream  from 
which  we  must  awaken  to  moral  reality.  But  such  a 
transcendental  idealism  must  always  call  forth  the  pro- 
test of  a  healthy  moral  realism.  "  The  world  and  life's 

1  Matthew  Arnold,  Poems :  "  Youth  and  Calm." 


Rationalism  169 

too  big  to  pass  for  a  dream."  Nay,  the  advocate  of  sen- 
sibility will  not  hesitate  to  say  that  your  world  of  pure 
reason  is  all  a  mystic  dream,  that  moral  reality  is  to  be 
found  in  the  fleeting  moments  and  the  pleasures  and 
pains  they  bring,  that  he  who  has  dulled  his  sensibilities, 
and  lived  the  Stoic  life  of  apathy  to  these,  has  missed 
life's  only  treasure.  The  Cyrenaic  argument  for  preoc- 
cupation with  the  present  is  the  same  as  the  Stoic  argu- 
ment for  apathy  to  it — that  the  present  is  evanescent, 
and  perishes  with  the  using.  If  our  idealism  is  to  stand, 
it  must  contain  realism  within  itself ;  if  the  spirit  is  to 
live  its  own  proper  life,  it  can  only  be  by  annexing  the 
territory  of  the  flesh,  and  establishing  its  own  order 
there.  The  necessity  of  this  acknowledgment  of  the 
rights  of  sensibility  and  of  the  relative  truth  of  the 
hedonistic  interpretation  of  life  has  led,  both  among  the 
Greek  and  the  modern  moralists,  to  a  more  moderate 
statement  of  the  ethics  of  reason. 

We  must  say,  therefore,  that  the  ethic  of  pure  reason 
is,  no  less  than  the  ethic  of  pure  sensibility,  a  premature 
unification  of  human  life.  The  true  unity  is  the  unity 
of  the  manifold  ;  the  true  universal  is  the  universal  that 
contains  and  explains  all  the  particulars  ;  the  true  a 
priori  is  the  a  priori  which  embraces  the  empirical.  The 
simplification  required  is  one  which  shall  systematise  and 
organise  all  the  complex  elements  of  our  nature  and  our 
life,  not  one  which  is  reached  by  the  elimination  of  the 
complexity  and  detail.  The  rationalistic  principle,  like 
the  hedonistic,  is  too  simple.  As  well  try  to  eliminate 
sensation  from  the  intellectual  life,  as  sensibility  from 
the  moral.  In  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  the  form 
of  reason,  without  the  material  of  feeling,  is  empty ;  as 
the  material  of  feeling,  without  the  form  of  reason,  is 
blind.  The  mere  unity  of  reason  is  as  inadequate  to  the 
concrete  moral  life  as  is  the  mere  manifold  of  sensibility. 
The  one  provides  a  purely  abstract  ethical  formula,  as 
the  other  provides  only  the  'data  of  ethics.' 


170  The  Moral  Ideal 

6.  (B)  Moderate  Rationalism.  (a)  Its  beginnings 
in  Greek  ethics. — Moderate  rationalism  is,  one  might 
say,  the  characteristic  Greek  view  of  the  moral  life  ;  the 
Greek  ideal  is  a  life  of  rational  sensibility.  Such  an  ideal 
alone  satisfies  at  once  the  intellectualism  and  the  sensu- 
ousness  of  the  national  genius,  its  love  of  rational  clear- 
ness and  form,  and  of  aesthetic  satisfaction.  The  fact 
that  the  good  is  also  for  the  Greeks  the  beautiful,  and 
that  the  supreme  category  of  their  life  is  rather  TO  KO\OV 
than  TO  ayaOov,  carries  with  it  the  necessity  that  a  life  of 
reason  divorced  from  sensibility  could  never  prove  satis- 
fying to  them.  Their  keen  appreciation  of  '  the  things  of 
the  mind,'  of  the  purely  scientific  and  philosophical  inter- 
ests, made  it  equally  impossible  for  them  to  rest  content 
with  a  life  of  sensibility  divorced  from  reason.  It  is 
not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find,  in  Greek  philosophical 
literature,  impressive  and  invaluable  statements  of  the 
necessity  of  this  ethical  harmony.  "We  need  only  here 
recall  Heraclitus's  suggestions  of  that  order,  uncreated  by 
gods  or  men,  which  pervades  all  things,  of  that  '  common 
wisdom  '  to  which  man  ought  to  conform  his  life,  of 
those  '  fixed  measures '  which  the  sun  himsejf  must 
observe  "else  the  Erinnyes  will  find  him  out,"  of  the 
universal  '  harmony  of  opposites  '  by  which  the  process 
of  things  is  made  possible  ;  the  Socratic  life  and  teaching, 
with  its  perfect  moderation,  its  ^ur/Svtv  ajav,  its  reduction 
of  the  conduct  of  life  to  the  discovery  of  the  true  '  meas- 
ure '  of  life's  experience ;  Plato's  '  harmony  '  of  appetite 
and  '  spirit '  with  reason,  and  his  picture  of  the  soul  as 
a  well-ordered  State  in  which  justice,  the  key  to  all  the 
virtues,  lies  in  the  doing  of  its  proper  work  by  every 
element,  and  of  the  common  weal  that  results  from  such 
a  perfect  division  and  co-operation ;  and  the  Aristotelian 
conception  of  virtue  as  the  choice  of  '  the  mean  '  between 
the  two  extremes  of  excess  and  defect,  of  happiness  or 
welfare  as  consisting  in  rational  activity  accompanied  by 
pleasure,  of  virtuous  activity  as  essentially  pleasant  be- 


Rationalism  171 

cause  habitual  and  easy,  and  thus,  finally,  of  pleasure  itself 
as  the  bloom  and  crown  of  the  life  of  virtue. 

7.  (&)  Its  modern  expressions,  (a)  Butler's  theory 
of  conscience. — It  is  in  modern  philosophy,  however, 
that  the  moderate  version  of  Eationalism  has  received  the 
greatest  attention  and  the  most  important  development. 
Here  it  is  familiar  to  us  under  the  name  of  '  Intuitionism,' 
and  the  real  founder  of  Intuitionism  was  Bishop  Butler 
in  his  famous  Sermons.  Butler's  problem  came  to  him 
from  his  predecessors  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Hobbes, 
by  his  theory  of  the  artificial  and  conventional  character 
of  moral  laws,1  by  his  resolution  of  '  nature '  into  custom 
and  contract,  had  given  rise  to  several  attempts  to  prove 
the  directly  rational  and  natural  character  of  these  laws. 
The  rational  moralists,  Cudworth  and  Clarke,  had  sought 
to  prove  the  '  eternal  fitness '  of  moral  distinctions,  their 
'  immutable  and  eternal '  nature,  their  mathematical 
necessity,  their  utter  rationality.  For  them,  as  for  the 
Stoics,  morality  was  part  of  the  *  nature  of  things/  and 
the  bad  was  synonymous  with  the  absurd  or  irrational 
Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson,  again,  had  contended  for  an 
immediate  and  unerring  perception  of  moral  distinctions, 
a  '  moral  sense '  of  the  beauty  and  deformity  of  actions. 
Butler,  following  on  the  whole  the  lead  of  the  latter 
school,  seeks  to  bring  ethics  back  to  earth,  and  to  find 
in  the  peculiar  nature  and  constitution  of  man  the  clue 
to  all  moral  distinctions.  In  the  little  State  of  Mansoul, 
however,  Butler  finds,  as  Plato  had  already  found,  a 
principle  which  draws  its  right  to  rule  from  its  com- 
munity with  the  central  principle  of  all  things. 

1  In  a  subtle  sense,  indeed,  moral  laws  are,  for  Hobbes,  'laws  of  nature,' 
'rules  of  reason,'  'immutable  and  eternal,'  since  they  are  nature's  own 
ways  out  of  the  'state  of  nature.'  "Injustice,  ingratitude,  arrogance, 
pride,  iniquity,  acception  of  persons  and  the  rest,  can  never  be  made  lawful. 
For  it  can  never  be  that  war  shall  preserve  life,  and  peace  destroy  it." — 
Leviathan,  ch.  xv.  For  Hobbes's  immediate  successors  this  element  of  his 
thought  seems  to  have  had  no  significance. 


1 72  The  Moral  Ideal 

(1)  Conscience. — The  sum  and  substance  of  morality 
being  contained  in  the  maxim  '  Follow  nature/  the  busi- 
ness of  ethics  is  to  determine  the  true  meaning  of '  human 
nature.'  In  the  determination  of  this,  Butler  uses  to  fine 
purpose  Plato's  figure  of  the  State.  "A  system,  economy, 
of  constitution,"  is  "  a  one  or  a  whole,  made  of  several 
parts,"  in  such  wise  that  "  the  several  parts,  even  con- 
sidered as  a  whole,  do  not  complete  the  idea,  unless,  in 
the  notion  of  a  whole,  you  include  the  relations  and 
respects  which  those  parts  have  to  each  other."  Now, 
when  we  consider  the  various  elements  of  human  nature, 
we  find  that  the  most  important  relation  which  they 
sustain  to  each  other  is  precisely  that  relation  which  is 
most  important  in  the  civil  economy — namely,  the  rela- 
tion of  authority  or  right  to  rule.  This  difference  in  au- 
thority, "  not  being  a  difference  in  strength  or  degree," 
Butler  calls  "  a  difference  in  nature  and  in  kind."  The 
supreme  place  in  the  hierarchy  of  natural  principles  be- 
longs of  right  to  the  rational  or  reflective  ;  it  is  theirs 
to  govern  the  unreflective,  immediate,  impulsive  prin- 
ciples or  '  propensions.'  The  chief  of  the  reflective  prin- 
ciples is  conscience.  "  There  is  a  principle  of  reflection 
in  men,  by  which  they  distinguish  between,  approve  and 
disapprove,  their  own  actions.  We  are  plainly  consti- 
tuted such  sort  of  creatures  as  to  reflect  upon  our  own 
nature.  The  mind  can  take  a  view  of  what  passes  within 
itself,  its  propensions,  aversions,  passions,  affections,  as 
respecting  such  objects,  and  in  such  degrees  ;  and  of  the 
several  actions  consequent  thereupon.  In  this  survey  it 
approves  of  one,  disapproves  of  another,  and  towards  a 
third  is  affected  in  neither  of  these  ways,  but  is  quite 
indifferent.  This  principle  in  man,  by  which  he  approves 
or  disapproves  his  heart,  temper,  and  actions,  is  con- 
science." *  Authority  is  "  a  constituent  part  of  this  reflex 
approbation  .  .  .  implied  in  the  very  idea  of  reflex 
approbation.  .  .  .  You  cannot  form  a  notion  of  this  faculty, 

1  Sermons,  i.  §§  7,  8. 


Rationalism  173 

conscience,  without  taking  in  judgment,  direction,  super- 
intendency.  ...  to  preside  and  govern,  from  the  very 
economy  and  constitution  of  man,  belongs  to  it."  l 

"  As  the  idea  of  a  civil  constitution  implies  in  it  united 
strength,  various  subordinations  under  one  direction,  that 
of  the  supreme  authority,  the  different  strength  of  each 
particular  member  of  the  society  not  coming  into  the 
idea  ;  whereas,  if  you  leave  out  the  subordination,  the 
union,  and  the  one  direction,  you  destroy  and  lose  it.  So 
reason,  several  appetites,  passions,  and  affections,  prevailing 
in  different  degrees  of  strength,  is  not  that  idea  or  notion 
of  human  nature  ;  but  that  nature  consists  in  these  several 
principles  considered  as  having  a  natural  respect  to  each 
other,  in  the  several  passions  being  naturally  subordinate 
to  the  one  superior  principle  of  reflection  or  conscience. 
Every  bias,  instinct,  propension  within,  is  a  real  part  of 
our  nature,  but  not  the  whole :  add  to  these  the  superior 
faculty,  whose  office  it  is  to  adjust,  manage,  and  preside 
over  them,  and  take  in  this  its  natural  superiority,  and 
you  complete  the  idea  of  human  nature.  And  as  in  civil 
government  the  constitution  is  broken  in  upon  and  vio- 
lated, by  power  and  strength  prevailing  over  authority ;  so 
the  constitution  of  man  is  broken  in  upon  and  violated, 
by  the  lower  faculties  or  principles  within  prevailing 
over  that  which  is  in  its  nature  supreme  over  them 
all."  5  '  Natural '  action  is,  therefore^  action  proportionate 
to  the  nature  of  man  as  a  whole,  as  a  constitution  or 
economy  ;  or  it  is  action  prescribed  by  conscience,  as  the 
supreme  regulative  principle  of  the  human  constitution. 

The  approval  or  disapproval  of  this  conscience,  which 
makes  man  "  in  the  strictest  and  most  proper  sense  a  law 
unto  himself,"  is  immediate  or  intuitive,  and  unerring. 
It  "  pronounces  determinately  some  actions  to  be  in 
themselves  just,  right,  good ;  others  to  be  in  themselves 
evil,  wrong,  unjust."  "  Let  any  plain  honest  man,  before 
he  engages  in  any  course  of  action,  ask  himself,  Is  this  I 

1  Sermons,  ii.  §  19.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  §  1. 


174  The  Moral  Ideal 

am  going  about  right,  or  is  it  wrong  ?  Is  it  good,  or  is 
it  evil  ?  I  do  not  in  the  least  doubt,  but  that  this  ques- 
tion would  be  answered  agreeably  to  truth  and  virtue, 
by  almost  any  fair  man  in  almost  any  circumstance."  * 

(2)  Self-love. — Butler  recognises  a  second  principle  in 
human  nature  which,  since  it  also  is  reflective,  has  an 
equally  authoritative  rank  with  conscience  —  namely, 
'  cool '  or  '  reasonable  self-love.'  Action  in  the  line  of 
self-love  is  as  '  natural '  as  action  in  the  line  of  con- 
science. "If  passion  prevails  over  self-love,  the  con- 
sequent action  is  unnatural;  but  if  self-love  prevails 
over  passion,  the  action  is  natural  It  is  manifest  that 
self-love  is  in  human  nature  a  superior  principle  to 
passion.  This  may  be  contradicted  without  violating 
that  nature ;  but  the  former  cannot.  So  that,  if  we  will 
act  conformably  to  man's  nature,  reasonable  self-love 
must  govern."2  The  sphere  of  this  second  regulative 
principle  is  that  of  prudence — a  part  of  the  total  sphere 
of  virtue,  which  is  the  empire  of  conscience.  "  It  should 
seem  that  a  due  concern  about  our  own  interest  or  happi- 
ness, and  a  reasonable  endeavour  to  secure  and  promote 
it,  which  is,  I  think,  very  much  the  meaning  of  the  word 
prudence,  in  our  language, — it  should  seem  that  this  is 
virtue,  and  the  contrary  behaviour  faulty  and  blamable ; 
since,  in  the  calmest  way  of  reflection,  we  approve  of  the 
first,  and  condemn  the  other  conduct,  both  in  ourselves 
and  others."  a  The  approval  is  as  immediate  in  the  one 
case  as  in  the  other.  "  The  faculty  within  us,  which  is 
the  judge  of  actions,  approves  of  prudent  actions  and  dis- 
approves imprudent  ones ;  I  say  prudent  and  imprudent 
actions,  as  such,  and  considered  distinctly  from  the  happi- 
ness or  misery  which  they  occasion."  4  This  principle  of 
self-love  "  is  indeed  by  no  means  the  religious,  or  even 
moral,  institution  of  life,"  but  "  prudence  is  a  species  of 
virtue,  and  folly  of  vice."  As  guides  of  conduct,  "  con- 

1  Sermons,  iii.  §  4.  2  Ibid.,  ii.  §  16. 

3  Dissert,  ii.,  "  Of  the  Nature  of  Virtue,"  §  8.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  §  11. 


Rationalism  175 

science  and  self-love,  if  we  understand  our  true  happi- 
ness, always  lead  us  the  same  way — for  the  most  part  in 
this  world,  but  entirely  and  in  every  instance  if  we  take 
in  the  future,  and  the  whole ;  this  being  implied  in  the 
notion  of  a  good  and  perfect  administration  of  things." 

(3)  Under  these  regulative  principles *  comes  the 
entire  impulsive  nature,  which  may  be  summarised  in 
two  main  divisions — the  selfish  and  the  benevolent,  or, 
as  we  should  say,  the  egoistic  and  the  altruistic.  "  Man- 
kind has  various  instincts  and  principles  of  action,  as 
brute  creatures  have — some  leading  most  directly  and 
immediately  to  the  good  of  the  community,  and  some 
most  directly  to  private  good."  The  latter,  may  col- 
lectively be  termed  '  passionate  or  sensual  selfishness,' 
the  former  passionate  benevolence.  Self-love,  as  '  cool ' 
or  '  settled '  in  its  temper,  and  general  in  its  range,  is 
distinguished  as  well  from  selfishness  as  from  benevo- 
lence, as  well  from  passionate  and  '  particular '  regard  for 
self  as  from  such  passionate  and  *  particular '  regard  for 
others. 

It  follows,  first,  that  virtue  consists  neither  in  self- 
interest  nor  in  disinterestedness :  "  the  goodness  or  bad- 
ness of  actions  does  not  arise  from  hence,  that  the 
epithet,  interested  or  disinterested,  may  be  applied  to 
them  any  more  than  any  other  indifferent  epithet." 
Hence,  secondly,  utility  is  not  the  ground  of  virtue. 
We  judge  actions  to  be  good  or  bad,  "  not  from  their 
being  attended  with  present  or  future  pleasure  or  pain, 
but  from  their  being  what  they  are  —  namely,  what 
becomes  such  creatures  as  we  are,  what  the  state  of  the 

1  Butler  sometimes  recognises  a  third  regulative  principle  —  namely, 
benevolence  or  'love  of  our  neighbour.'  Cf.  especially  Sermons,  zii. 
§  8,  where  he  speaks  of  "  the  two  general  affections,  benevolence  and  self- 
love"  ;  and  §  10,  where  he  co-ordinates  these  principles  :  "So  far  as  self- 
love,  and  cool  reflection  upon  what  is  for  our  interest,  would  set  us  on 
work  to  gain  a  supply  of  our  own  several  wants,  so  far  the  love  of  our 
neighbour  would  make  us  do  the  same  for  him."  In  Sermons,  i.  §  4,  he 
says :  "  There  is  a  natural  principle  of  benevolence  in  man,  which  is  in 
some  degree  to  society  what  self-love  is  to  the  individual." 


case  requires,  or  the  contrary."  l  We  are  "  constituted 
so  as  to  condemn  falsehood,  unprovoked  violence,  in- 
justice, and  to  approve  of  benevolence  to  some  preferably 
to  others,  abstracted  from  all  consideration  which  conduct 
is  likeliest  to  produce  an  overbalance  of  happiness  or 
misery."  Yet,  thirdly,  the  only  final  justification  or  ex- 
planation of  virtue  is  its  reduction  to  self-interest.  "  Let 
it  be  allowed,  though  virtue  or  moral  rectitude  does  indeed 
consist  in  affection  to  and  pursuit  of  what  is  right  and 
good,  as  such ;  yet,  that  when  we  sit  down  in  a  cool 
hour,  we  can  neither  justify  to  ourselves  this  or  any 
other  pursuit,  till  we  are  convinced  that  it  will  be  for 
our  happiness,  or  at  least  not  contrary  to  it." 2 

8.  Criticism  of  Butler's  theory.  (1)  Its  hedonistic 
tendency. — We  thus  find  in  Butler  several  lines  of 
thought  which  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  har- 
monise with  one  another.  He  seems  to  be  almost  equally 
impressed  by  the  interested  and  the  disinterested  sides 
of  conduct,  but  to  be  more  fully  persuaded  of  the  im- 
portance of  its  self-regarding  than  of  that  of  its  benevo- 
lent side.  Virtue  is  not  synonymous  with  benevolence, 
but  in  the  last  analysis  it  is  synonymous  with  self-love. 
The  latter  is  a  reflective  and  reasonable  principle  of  life ; 
prudence  and  virtue  are  co-ordinate,  if  not  coincident. 
In  spite  of  the  authority  of  conscience,  and  the  intrinsic 
quality  of  that  Tightness  which  it  approves,  Butler's 
morality  is  not  disinterested;  its  raison  d'etre  is  the 
individual  happiness  to  which  it  leads.  The  approval  or 
disapproval  of  conscience  is  immediate  and  direct,  inde- 
pendent of  the  consequences  to  which  the  action  leads ; 
but  the  logical  basis  of  this  approval  or  disapproval  is 
the  bearing  of  the  action  upon  the  agent's  happiness  in 
the  present  and  in  the  future.  Though  the  approval  of 

1  Preface  to  Sermons,  §33. 

2 -Sermons,  xi.  §  21.      Cf.   Sermons,  xii.  §  20 :    "It  is  manifest  that 
nothing  can  be  of  consequence  to  mankind  or  any  creature  but  happiness." 


Rationalism  177 

conscience  is  immediate,  and  not  the  result  of  calculation, 
yet  the  course  approved  is  always  that  of  self-interest 
in  the  future,  if  not  in  the  present.  The  authority  of 
conscience  is  therefore,  after  all,  not  original,  but  secon- 
dary,— derived  from  self-interest.  Butler's  '  conscience  ' 
is  in  itself  a  merely  formal  principle ;  and  when  he  gives 
it  content,  that  content  is  the  content  of  self-love.  This 
is,  of  course,  to  abandon  Rationalism  for  Hedonism. 

(2)  Its  psychological  character. — Failing  such  an  iden- 
tification of  virtue  with  prudence,  of  conscience  with  self- 
love,  we  have  no  explanation  of  morality,  no  theory  of 
virtue,  but  a  mere  psychology  of  the  moral  life.     And 
this  is,  in  general,  Butler's  position.     He  is  willing,  in 
the  main,   to  rest  in   the  immediate  and   authoritative 
approval  of  conscience,  without  investigating  the  object 
of  its  approval  or  the  basis  of  its  authority.     Conscience 
is  the  regulative  faculty  in  human  nature,  and  virtue  is 
that  conduct  which  it  dictates  as  fitting  or  natural  to  man. 
Even  as  a  psychological  statement,  we  must  dissent  from 
Butler's  artificial  divorce  between  act  and  consequence. 
Even  psychologically,  the  action  is  not  separated  from 
its  consequences,  and  judged  to  be  in   itself  right  or 
wrong ;  the  consequences  reveal  the  nature  of  the  action, 
and  are  themselves  part  of  it.     But  we  must  advance 
beyond  the  merely  psychological  to  the  strictly  ethical 
view ;  we  must  investigate  the  '  why '  and  the  '  what '  of 
conscience's  approval  and  disapproval,  the    ground  and 
meaning  of  that  approval  and  disapproval. 

(3)  Its  dualism  (i.)  of  virtue  and  prudence. — His  re- 
fusal to  identify  conscience  with  self-love  leads  Butler  to 
rest  in  an  irreducible  dualism  of  the  spheres  governed  by 
these  two  principles  respectively — the  spheres  of  virtue 
and  prudence.     For  conscience  and  self-love  are  at  least 
co-ordinate   in   authority ;    '  the  epicurean   rule  of  life,' 
though    not    identical   with  the   '  moral,'   has   its   place 
alongside  the  latter.     Eegard  for  our  interest  or  '  good 
on  the  whole'  is  as  legitimate  as  regard  for  the  right. 

M 


178  The  Moral  Ideal 

This  is  Butler's  way  of  moderating  the  rigorism  of  his 
rational  standpoint :  he  recognises  the  '  reasonableness ' 
of  self-love  as  a  principle  of  conduct.  But  it  is  impos- 
sible thus  to  adjust  the  rival  claims  of  virtue  and 
prudence ;  and  Butler,  when  pressed,  falls  back,  as  we 
have  seen,  upon  the  old  hedonistic  device  of  resolving 
the  virtuous  into  the  prudential  self.  This  dilemma  is 
the  result  of  his  inadequate  conception  of  virtue.  The 
'  right '  must  contain  the  '  good,'  virtue  must  include 
prudence.  Or  rather,  the  true  moral  ideal  must  be  the 
supreme  good,  or  simply  the  good — that  good  which  not 
only  transcends  all  other  goods  but  explains  their  good- 
ness, and  in  undivided  loyalty  to  which  the  moral  being 
finds  his  perfect  satisfaction.  The  true  moral  interest 
must  be  supreme,  embracing  and  transcending,  including 
and  interpreting,  all  the  interests  of  life.  The  mere  sug- 
gestion of  a  '  self '  whose  satisfaction  or  interest  is  still 
to  seek  after  the  moral  task  is  done,  is  proof  sufficient 
that  that  task  has  been  inadequately  conceived.  The 
only  way  to  make  the  various  circles  of  our  life's 
activities  concentric,  is  by  discovering  their  common 
centre.  , 

(ii.)  Of  benevolence  and  self-love. — Finally,  Butler's  diffi- 
culty in  reconciling  benevolence  and  self-love  arises  from 
the  same  fundamental  defect.  If  the  self  does  not  find 
its  perfect  satisfaction  in  the  life  of  virtue,  neither,  of 
course,  will  other  selves  find  theirs ;  and  it  is  only  be- 
cause the  self  is  thus  inadequately  conceived,  that  the 
conflict  of  individual  interests  arises.  It  is  the  pruden- 
tial, not  the  virtuous,  self  which  finds  it  necessary  to 
compete  with  others  for  the  goods  of  life,  because  its 
interest  and  theirs  are  mutually  exclusive.  If  we  would 
find  deliverance  from  Hobbes's  '  war  of  every  man  against 
every  man,'  we  must  learn  to  see  how  deeply  unnatural 
that  warfare  is.  Again  we  must  insist  that,  as  the  good 
of  human  life  is  not  conceived  aright  until  it  is  seen  to 
be  a  good  so  complete  that  the  individual  has  no  private 


Rationalism  179 

interests  of  his  own  apart  from  his  participation  in  it,  so 
it  is  not  conceived  aright  until  it  is  seen  to  be  a  good 
so  comprehensive  that  all  individuals  alike  shall  find  in 
it  their  common  good.1 

9.  ()3)  Intuitionism.  Its  divergences  from  Butler. — 
Contemporary  Rationalism  retains  essentially  the  form  in 
which  Butler  stereotyped  the  theory.  That  his  '  psycho- 
logical '  standpoint  is  still  the  standpoint  of  the  school  is 
indicated  by  the  term  which  it  adopts  to  characterise  its 
view,  namely,  '  Intuitionism.'  That  moral  principles  are 
directly  and  immediately  recognised,  that  they  are  self- 
evident  or  axiomatic  truths  of  reason,  and  that  conscience 
is  the  faculty  of  such  immediate  and  unerring  moral  in- 
sight,— all  this  is  held  in  common  by  Butler  and  by  the 
Scottish  School  of  '  Common- Sense.'  The  absolute  auth- 
oritativeness  of  these  first  principles  of  morality,  and 
therefore  of  conscience,  as  the  faculty  which  reveals 
them,  is  also  common  ground.  But  the  conscience  of 
contemporary  Intuitionism  has  a  much  narrower  range 
than  Butler's  conscience.  The  latter  was  a  faculty  of 
particular  moral  judgments  or  '  perceptions,'  which  told 
the  plain  man  unerringly  and  immediately  the  course 
of  present  duty  '  in  almost  any  circumstances.'  The 
contemporary  conscience  is  found  unequal  to  this  task. 
The  historical  sense  has  developed  greatly  since  Butler 
wrote,  and  has  forced  us  to  acknowledge  that  the  '  human 
nature  '  which  seemed  to  him  a  constant  and  unchanging 
quantity  is  a  growth,  and,  with  it,  its  '  virtue  '  and  '  vice  '; 
that  the  content  of  our  particular  moral  judgments  varies 

1  Such  a  conception  is  perhaps  suggested  by  Butler  himself  in  his  prin- 
ciple of  the  '  love  of  God,'  which  seems  to  transcend  both  conscience  and 
self-love.  Cf.  T.  B.  Kilpatrick,  Introduction  to  Butler's  Sermons. — The 
above  is  not  intended,  of  course,  as  an  exhaustive  estimate  of  Butler's 
contribution  to  ethical  thought,  and  is  necessarily  more  critical  in  tone 
than  such  an  estimate  would  be.  So  far  as  the  broad  lines  of  his  theory 
are  concerned,  indeed,  Butler  may  be  fairly  regarded  as  one  c-f  the  founders 
of  Eudsemonism.  Cf.  infra,  p.  218. 


180  TJie  Moral  Ideal 

much  with  time  and  place  and  circumstance,  that  these 
judgments  are,  in  a  very  real  sense,  empirical  judgments. 
The  Intuitionist  has  accordingly  been  compelled  either  to 
acknowledge  that  conscience,  in  Butler's  sense  of  the 
term,  is  educated  hy  experience,  and  is  dependent  upon 
such  empirical  instruction  for  all  the  concreteness  of  its 
dicta,  or  so  to  narrow  the  meaning  of  the  term  '  conscience' 
as  to  make  it  the  unerring  faculty  of  general  or  '  first ' 
principles  merely,  and  to  attribute  to  the  very  fallible 
and  empirically  minded  'judgment'  the  application  of  these 
immutable  principles  to  the  variety  of  particular  circum- 
stances and  cases  as  they  arise.  The  latter  alternative 
is  the  one  chosen.  The  historical  element  in  morality  is 
carefully  sifted  from  the  unhistorical,  the  temporal  and 
changeable  manifestation  from  the  eternal  and  unchanging 
essence.  Morality  is  reduced  to  simple  or  ultimate  ideas 
— such  as  justice,  temperance,  truthfulness  ;  these,  it  is 
claimed,  have  no  history,  and  their  a  priori  origin  is  the 
source  of  their  absolute  validity. 

Its  defects. — (1)  The  current  intuitional  doctrine  is 
thus  forced  to  sacrifice  all  the  concreteness  and  particular- 
ity which  belonged  to  Butler's  theory  of  conscience.  The 
uneducated  conscience,  the  original  faculty,  provides  us 
with  no  more  than  the  merest  generalities  or  abstractions, 
which  must  be  made  concrete  before  they  have  any  real 
significance.  Moral  life  consists  of  particulars,  of  '  situa- 
tions/ of  definite  circumstances  and  individual  occasions ; 
and  an  indeterminate  or  vague  morality  is  no  morality  at 
alL  Intuitionisin,  with  its  fixed  and  absolute  principles 
of  conduct,  can  find  no  place  in  its  ethical  scheme  for 
the  actual  variation  in  moral  opinion.  What,  for  example, 
is  the  '  equality '  demanded  by  the  principle  of  justice  ? 
Very  different  answers  would  be  given  to  this  question  by 
different  epochs  of  human  civilisation,  and  by  different 
communities  in  the  same  epoch.  Make  the  conception 
concrete,  and  it  is  found  to  be  a  changing  one ;  allow  for 


Rationalism  181 

the  variation,  and  the  general  formula  becomes  a  mere 
abstraction.  It  is  the  particulars  and  details  of  the 
moral  life  that  are  real;  our  general  moral  conceptions 
or  principles  derive  their  reality  from  the  particulars  of 
which  they  are  the  abstract  or  transcript. 

(2)  The  intuitive  character  of  moral  principles  may  be 
accounted  for,  as  just  suggested,  by  an  empirical  theory 
of  morality.     It  may  be  shown  that  these  principles  are 
intuitive  only  in  the  sense  of  being  instinctive.     To  the 
individual  in  any  age  and  country,  the  morality  of  that 
age  and  country,  and  even  the  particular  modification  of 
it  in  the  atmosphere  of  which  he  has  grown  up,  may 
be  said  to  present  itself  as  absolutely  and  immediately 
obligatory.     The  moral,  like  the  intellectual,  conscious- 
ness of  the  nation  and  of  the  society  to  which  he  belongs 
is,  somehow,  focussed  and  crystallised  in  the  individual, 
who  is  their  child.     One  might  go  further,  and  say  that 
the  experience  and  education  of  the  race  itself  is,  in  a 
sense,  possessed  by  the  individual,  that  the  real  education 
of  conscience  is  on  a  wider  scale  than  the  individual,  and 
is  what  Lessing  called  an  '  education  of  the  human  race/ 
The  individual,  as  the  child  of  the  race,  the  heir  of  all 
the  ages  of  its  experience,  accepts  his  inheritance,  whether 
moral  or  intellectual,  for  the  most  part  unquestioningly, 
and  is  only  too  content  to  stand  in  the  old  paths.     The 
absoluteness  and  originality  of  moral  principles  are  there- 
fore, or  may  be,  merely  subjective.     Objectively,  morality 
is  constantly  changing ;  and  even  the  moral  consciousness 
is  found,  when  we  regard  it  from  without,  to  be  changing 
too.     The  change  in  the  one  is  correlative  with  the  change 
in  the  other.     All  that  is  left,  independent  of  experience, 
is  a  vague  moral  susceptibility  or  potentiality,  which  ex- 
perience alone  can  determine  and  define. 

(3)  In  two  respects,  Intuitionism  fails  to  satisfy  the 
requirements  of  an  ethical  explanation,     (i.)  It  is  a  mere 
psychology  of  the  moral  consciousness.     We  may  admit 
that  moral  intuitions  are  facts,  though  they  have  a  history 


182  The  Moral  Ideal 

and  are  not  original  or  simple ;  that  they  represent  the 
subjective  side  of  the  '  what '  of  morality.  But  the 
ethical  question  lies  behind  such  facts,  it  is  the  question 
of  the  '  why  '  or  the  meaning  of  the  facts.  Certain  moral 
principles,  like  certain  intellectual  principles,  may  be  to 
us  necessary  and  irresistible ;  but  these  characteristics  do 
not,  as  such,  tell  us  anything  of  the  objective  basis  of  the 
principles  in  question,  anything  of  the  nature  of  morality 
itself.  They  may  be  characteristic  of  our  moral  con- 
sciousness, and  yet  not  be  fit  to  stand  as  the  criteria  of 
moral  value.  The  question  which  Hume  raised  with 
regard  to  the  intellectual  intuitions  must  also  be  raised 
with  regard  to  the  moral  intuitions.  Hume  did  not  deny 
the  '  necessity '  of  the  causal  principle ;  but  he  sought  to 
resolve  that  necessity  into  its  causes,  showing  that  it 
might  be  entirely  subjective, — a  feeling  which  was  the 
product  of  experience  and  custom,  and  had  no  objective 
value.  So  the  ethical  question  of  the  value  of  moral 
principles,  of  their  objective  basis  and  explanation,  is 
not  answered  by  a  psychological  theory  of  their  '  neces- 
sity '  or  '  universality.'  The  real  question  of  ethics  is 
not,  as  Intuitionists  have  stated,  and  answered  it :  How 
do  we  come  to  know  moral  distinctions  ?  but,  What  are 
these  distinctions  ?  "What  is  the  moral  ideal — the  single 
criterion  which  shall  yield  all  such  distinctions  ? 

(ii.)  Intuitionism  is  a  mere  re-statement,  in  scientific 
terms,  of  the  ordinary  moral  consciousness.  The  several 
moral  principles  are  conceived,  as  they  are  conceived  by 
unreflective  thought,  as  all  equally  absolute ;  they  are 
not  reduced  to  the  unity  of  a  system.  Short  of  such 
unity,  however,  ethics  cannot  rest.  Further,  what  is 
axiomatic  to  common-sense  is  not  axiomatic  to  ethical 
reflection.  The  only  axiom  of  ethical  science  would 
be  the  rationality  of  the  moral  life ;  but  it  is  for  ethics 
to  exhibit  its  rationale.  This  scientific  articulation 
of  the  vague  practical  sense  of  mankind  is  possible  only 
through  a  definition  of  the  ethical  end.  But,  taken  even 


Rationalism  183 

• 
at   its   own   profession,  as  the  ethics  of   common-sense, 

Intuitionism  is  easily  criticised.  For,  apart  from  its  im- 
plicit utilitarianism,  common-sense  admits  exceptions  of 
a  large  kind  to  the  principles  of  conduct  which  it  recog- 
nises. These  principles  are  not  to  it  more  than  high 
generalisations,  which  have  to  be  modified,  temporarily  or 
permanently,  according  to  circumstances.  As  Professor 
Sidgwick  has  so  convincingly  shown,  "  the  doctrine  of 
common-sense  is  rather  a  rough  compromise  between  con- 
flicting lines  of  thought  than  capable  of  being  deduced 
from  a  clear  and  universally  accepted  principle."  ]  The 
morality  of  common- sense  is  sufficiently  definite  for 
"  practical  guidance  to  common  people  in  common  cir- 
cumstances " ;  but  "  the  attempt  to  elevate  it  into  a 
system  of  scientific  ethics  "  is  necessarily  a  failure.  To 
fix  and  stereotype  its  principles,  to  conceive  them  as 
eternally  and  absolutely  valid,  is  to  construct  a  common- 
sense  for  mankind  to  suit  a  certain  theory  of  it,  rather 
than  to  interpret  it  impartially,  as  Intuitionism  professes 
to  do. 

(4)  Yet  we  must  acknowledge  that  the  Intuitionists 
have  signalised  an  all -important  truth,  however  they 
may  have  misinterpreted  it.  There  is  an  absolute,  an 
'  eternal  and  immutable  '  element  in  morality.  The  fact 
that  its  history  is  a  history  of  progress,  and  not  of  mere 
capricious  variation — that  there  is  an  evolution,  a  definite 
tendency,  to  be  traced  in  the  ethical  process — proves  the 
presence  and  operation,  throughout  the  process,  of  such 
an  element.  But  that  element  lies  deeper  than  individ- 
ual moral  laws  or  principles,  deeper  than  any  given  form 
of  moral  practice ;  for  these  are  always  changing.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  the  moral  ideal  itself.  In  virtue  of 
the  absolute  claim  and  authority  of  the  ideal,  its  various 
changing  expressions,  the  several — so  diverse — paths 
along  which,  in  different  ages,  in  different  circumstances, 
by  different  individuals,  that  ideal  may  be  reached  and 

1  Methods  of  Ethics,  p.  347  (third  ed.) 


184  The  Moral  Ideal 

. 

realised,  derive  a  claim  and  an  authority  as  absolute  as 
that  of  the  ideal  itself.  Their  claim  is  its  claim,  their 
authority  its  authority.  Nor  is  the  individual's  moral 
obligation  in  respect  of  these  laws  a  whit  less  absolute 
than  it  would  be  if  the  pathway  to  the  ideal  were  fixed 
and  unchangeable.  This  is  the  one  path  for  him,  here 
and  now ;  and  in  practice  the  question  does  not  arise : 
"  And  what  shall  this  or  that  man  do,  in  this  or  that  age, 
or  country,  or  set  of  circumstances  ?  "  but  only,  "  What 
shall  I  do,  in  mine  ? "  But  if  we  are  to  find  the  theoretic 
basis  of  this  absolute  and  eternal  obligation  of  morality, 
we  must  seek  it,  not  in  the  several  moral  laws  them- 
selves, but  in  the  common  ideal  which  underlies  and 
gives  meaning  to  them  all.  The  intuitional  school  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  done  more  than,  by  its  insistence 
upon  the  '  ought '  of  moral  life,  upon  the  absolute  signifi- 
cance of  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong,  to  have 
emphasised  the  fact  that  there  is  such  an  absolute  moral 
end  or  ideal.  The  definition  of  that  ideal  still  remains  as 
the  task  of  ethical  science. 

10.  The  ethical  service  of  Rationalism. — This  may 
be  summarised  thus  : — 

(1)  It  signalises  the   fundamentally  important  truth 
that  reason,   rather  than   sensibility,  is   the    regulative 
principle  in  the  life  of  a  rational  being.     Only,  it  tends 
towards  the  extreme  of  saying  that  reason  is  the  constitu- 
tive as  well  as  the  regulative  principle,  or  that  the  life  of 
man,  as  a  rational  being,  must  be  a  life  of  pure  reason ; 
which  is  to   miss  the  nerve  of  the  moral  life,  and   to 
identify  it  with  the  intellectual,  to  make  man  a  thinker 
only,  and  not  a  doer.     This,  the  characteristic  error  of 
Greek    ethics,   has   reappeared   in   modern    nationalism, 
and  notably  in  the  ethics  of  Kant. 

(2)  To  the  realistic  interpretation  of  Hedonism,  Ea- 
tionalism   opposes   an   idealistic  view   of   morality.      It 
signalises  the  notion  of  duty  or  obligation,  the  distinction 


Rationalism  185 

between  the  '  ought '  and  the  '  is  ' ;  or,  in  short,  it  asserts 
that  the  ethical  end  is,  in  its  very  nature,  an  ideal 
demanding  realisation.  It  reaches,  however,  only  the 
form  of  the  moral  ideal.  The  content  must  come  from 
sensibility,  and  for  sensibility  the  ethics  of  reason  has  no 
proper  place. 

(3)  The  assertion,  which  is  repeated  again  and  again 
in  the  rational  school,  of  the  dignity  and  independence 
of  man  as  a  rational  being,  is  a  sublime  and  momentous 
truth.  For  man  rises  out  of  nature,  and  has  to  assert 
his  infinite  rational  superiority  to  nature.  Goodness 
means  the  subjugation  of  nature  to  spirit.  The  good 
life  is  the  rational  life ;  the  life  of  mere  nature  is,  in  a 
rational  being,  irrational.  And  it  may  well  seem,  in  the 
great  crises  of  the  struggle,  as  if  all  else  but  the  rational 
self  were  unworthy  to  live,  and  must  absolutely  die. 
Yet  nature  also  has  its  rights;  and  the  moral  life  is 
not  so  entirely  stern  and  joyless  as  Stoic  and  Kantian 
moralists  would  say.  Even  he  who  was  called,  by  reason 
of  the  greatness  of  his  moral  task,  '  a  man  of  sorrows 
and  acquainted  with  grief,'  had  yet  his  joy — the  deep 
and  abiding  joy  that  comes  of  moral  victory ;  and,  ac- 
cording to  the  measure  of  his  faithfulness,  each  com- 
batant may  share  that  joy. 

11.  Transition  to  Eudsemonism. — In  Rationalism, 
therefore,  no  more  than  in  Hedonism,  do  we  find  the  final 
ethical  theory.  Reason  must  indeed  be  the  governing 
power  in  the  party -warfare  of  the  souL  Without 
reason's  insight,  the  moral  life  were  impossible ;  a  ra- 
tional self-mastery  is  the  very  kernel  of  morality.  But 
such  a  true  self-mastery  is  not  effected  by  the  with- 
drawal of  reason  from  the  fray,  by  its  retreat  within  the 
sanctuary  of  peaceful  thought  and  undisturbed  philo- 
sophic meditation.  This  would  be  mere  quietism.  Life 
is  not  thought  or  contemplation,  but  strenuous  activity ; 
and  the  weapons  of  life's  warfare  are  forged  in  the  fur- 


186  The  Moral  Ideal 

nace  of  sensibility,  if  the  hand  that  wields  them  must  be 
guided  by  the  eye  of  thought.  We  must  either  fight 
with  these  weapons,  or  give  up  the  fight ;  for  other 
weapons  there  are  none  in  all  the  armoury  of  human 
nature. 

The  inevitable  confession  of  the  abstractness  of  a  pure 
ethic  of  reason  led,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  more  mode- 
rate form  of  Eationalism,  with  its  more  or  less  grudging 
acknowledgment  of  the  rights  of  sensibility.  The  result 
was  a  transition  from  what  we  might  call  an  abstract 
and  negative  ethical  monism  to  a  concrete  and  positive 
ethical  dualism.  The  hedonistic  principle,  or  the  pru- 
dential maxim  of  life,  since  it  can  neither  be  eliminated 
nor  annexed,  is  co-ordinated  with  the  moral,  rational 
or  virtuous  principle.  The  only  possibility  of  unifying 
these  two  principles  would  seem  to  be  by  reducing  virtue 
to  prudence ;  but  this  course  would  mean,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  theory,  the  disappearance  of  virtue,  as 
the  reverse  course  had  already  been  found  to  mean  the 
disappearance  of  prudence.  The  impossibility  of  a  purely 
rational  ethic  is,  however,  most  convincingly  displayed  in 
the  case  of  the  extreme  Eationalism  of  Kant.  His  final 
appeal  to  sensibility,  in  the  form  of  '  practical  interest ' 
or  '  reverence,'  is  closely  parallel  to  the  appeal  to  reason 
on  the  part  of  Hedonists  like  Mill  and  Professor  Sidg- 
wick.  As  the  latter,  Hedonists  or  advocates  of  sensibility 
though  they  are,  are  forced  in  the  end  to  hold  a  brief  for 
reason ;  so  is  Kant,  the  extreme  Eationalist  of  modern 
ethics,  compelled  at  last  to  admit  to  his  counsels  the 
despised  sensibility.  The  lesson  of  both  events  surely 
is,  that  neither  in  Hedonism  nor  in  Eationalism,  neither 
in  the  Ethics  of  Sensibility  nor  in  the  Ethics  of  Eeason, 
but  in  Eudaemonism,  or  the  Ethics  of  that  total  human 
Personality  which  contains,  as  elements,  both  reason  and 
sensibility,  is  the  full  truth  to  be  found. 


Rationalism  187 

LITERATURE. 
1.  EXPOSITORY. 

(a)  Ancient  Rationalism. 

Zeller,  Socrates  and  the  Socratic  Schools,  chs.  vii. ,  xiii.  ;  Stoics,  Epicureans, 

and  Sceptics,  part  ii. 
W.  "W.  Capes,  Stoicism. 

H.  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics,  ch.  ii.  §§  3,  4,  13-16. 
W.  Pater,  Marius  the  Epicurean  ;  Plato  and  Platonism. 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  §§  72-85. 

(b)  Modern  Rationalism. 

Butler,  Sermons,  i.-iii.,  xi.,  xii. ;  Dissertation,  Of  the  Nature  of  Virtue. 
Kant,   Fundamental  Principles   of  the   Metaphysic   of  Morals  (Abbott's 

trans.) 

H.  Calderwood,  Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy,  part  i.  chs.  i.-vi. 
N".  Porter,  Elements  of  Moral  Science. 

J.  Martineau,  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  vol.  ii.  part  ii.  bk.  L 
Jodl,  Geschichte  der  Ethik,  vol.  i.  pp.  189-196  (Butler);  voL  ii.  pp.  9-46 

(Kant),  pp.  408-431  (Intuitional  school). 
Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  part  v.  ch.  ii.  §  36  ;  part  vi.  ch.  L 

§39. 

2.  CRITICAL. 

J.  Dewey,  A  Study  of  Ethics,  pp.   73-115  ;  Outlines  of  Ethics,  pp.  78-95, 

147-152. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii.  ch.  iii.  (3rd  ed.) 
J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  ii. 
C.  F.  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  iii.  chs.  i.,  v. 
H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii. 
F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  Essay  IT. 


188 


CHAPTER   III. 

EUD^EMONISM,    OK   THE   ETHICS    OF   PERSONALITY. 

1.  The  ethical  dualism.  Its  theoretical  expression. 
— The  preceding  discussion  has  revealed  a  fundamental 
dualism  in  ethical  theory,  corresponding  to  a  fundamental 
dualism  in  the  nature  and  life  of  man.  The  task  which 
now  meets  us  is  the  solution  of  the  problem  raised 
by  this  dualism  in  ethical  theory  and  practice ;  but 
before  attempting  the  execution  of  that  task,  it  will 
be  well  to  bring  the  two  sides  of  the  dualism  into  clear 
relief. 

Looking  first  at  the  theoretical  side  of  the  question,  we 
have  found  the  two  comprehensive  types  of  ethical  theory 
to  be  the  Ethics  of  Eeason  and  the  Ethics  of  Sensibility. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  has  been  felt,  from  the  dawn  of  ethical 
reflection,  that  the  true  life  of  man  must  be  a  rational  life. 
Reason,  it  is  recognised,  is  the  differentiating  attribute 
of  man,  distinguishing  him  from  the  animal  or  merely 
sentient  being.  At  first,  it  is  true,  no  cleft  was  perceived 
between  the  life  of  reason  and  the  life  of  sensibility. 
Even  to  Socrates,  the  proper  life  of  man  is  one  of  sentient 
satisfaction,  although  it  is  essentially  a  rational  life,  the 
appropriate  life  of  a  rational  being.  The  Socratic  life  is 
a  self-examined  and  a  self-guided  life ;  the  measure  of 
sentient  satisfaction  is  set  by  the  reason  which  is  the 
distinguishing  attribute  of  man ;  the  criteria  of  goodness 
are  self-mastery  and  self-consistency.  The  place  of  reason 


Eudcemonism  189 

in  the  ethics  of  Socrates  becomes  evident  in  his  central 
doctrine  of  the  ethical  supremacy  of  knowledge,  of  the 
identity  of  knowledge  and  virtue,  or  human  excellence. 
The  wise  man,  or  the  man  who,  in  the  entire  conduct  of 
his  life,  follows  the  voice  of  reason,  is  the  man  who  has 
attained  the  chief  human  good.  By  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
more  explicitly  and  absolutely  than  by  Socrates,  the  secret 
of  the  good  life  is  found  in  reason,  and  the  life  of  sensi- 
bility is  condemned  as  irrational.  Plato,  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  0u/ioe,  recognises  a  secondary  value  in  sensibility, 
but  only  in  so  far  as  it  shares  in  the  rational  principle, 
and  is  reason's  watch-dog.  Aristotle  also  recognises  a 
higher  and  a  lower  virtue,  a  virtue  which  is  the  excellence 
of  a  purely  rational  being,  whose  life  is  the  life  of  reason 
itself,  and  a  virtue  which  is  the  excellence  of  a  compound 
nature  like  -  man's,  partly  rational,  partly  irrational  or 
sentient.  But  both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  their  common  master,  only  going  much  farther 
than  he  had  gone,  find  the  ideal  good  in  the  exclusive  life 
of  reason,  the  philosophic  or  contemplative  life.  To  both, 
this  is  the  divine  life,  some  participation  in  which  is  vouch- 
safed to  man  even  now,  and  in  the  aspiration  after  which, 
as  the  eternal  ideal,  he  must  seek  to  be  delivered  from 
the  bondage  of  the  lower  world  of  sensibility.  The  Stoics 
did  but  accentuate  this  ascetic  and  ideal  note,  so  promi- 
nent yet  so  surprising  in  the  moral  reflection  of  the 
Greeks,  this  divine  discontent  of  the  human  spirit  with 
its  lot  in  the  present  and  the  sensuous,  this  craving  for  a 
rational  and  abiding  good  behind  the  shows  of  sense  and 
time,  this  sublime  independence  of  all  that  suffers  shock 
and  change  in  mortal  life.  The  rationalism  and  asceti- 
cism of  modern  ethics  are  little  more  than  the  echo  of  this 
ancient  thought,  that  the  only  life  worthy  of  a  rational 
being  is  the  life  of  reason  itself.  It  is  this  thought  that 
we  have  found  working  in  the  rational  and  mathematical 
moralists,  who  seek  to  demonstrate  the  absurdity  of  the 
evil  life ;  in  their  successors  of  the  Intuitionist  school, 


190  The  Moral  Ideal 

who  maintain  the  self-evidence  of  moral  law  and  the  self- 
contradiction  of  moral  evil ;  and  in  Kant,  the  greatest  of 
modern  Eationalists,  to  whom  the  good  will  is  the  will 
that  takes  as  the  maxim  of  its  choice  a  principle  fit  for 
law  universal  in  a  kingdom  of  pure  reason,  and  in  whose 
eyes  the  slightest  alloy  of  sensibility  would  corrupt  the 
pure  gold  of  the  life  of  duty. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  life  of  sensibility  has  never  been 
without  its  defenders,  advocates  who  have  shown  no  less 
enthusiasm  on  its  behalf  than  their  opponents  have  shown 
on  behalf  of  reason.  We  have  just  noted  the  hedonistic 
element  in  the  ethical  teaching  of  Socrates.  The  im- 
portance of  this  element,  neglected  in  the  main  by  Plato, 
was  signalised  anew  by  Aristotle,  who  not  only  regarded 
the  life  of  virtue  as  essentially  a  pleasant  life,  but  saw  in 
pleasure  the  very  bloom  and  crown  of  goodness  or  well- 
being.  The  Epicureans,  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
and  the  Hedonists,  among  ourselves,  have  reversed  the 
Aristotelian  relation,  and  have  made  reason  the  servant 
of  feeling,  a  minister  to  be  consulted  always,  and  listened 
to  with  respect  and  confidence,  but  still  a  minister  only 
and  not  a  ruler  in  the  party-conflict  of  the  soul.  While 
the  interpretation  of  happiness  has  so  varied  that  it 
might  well  have  been  the  watchword  of  both  schools, 
the  hedonistic  interpretation  of  it  is  always  in  terms  of 
pleasure,  or  of  the  life  of  sensibility.  But  if  we  would 
find  the  perfectly  consistent  Hedonism,  the  thorough- 
going Ethics  of  Sensibility,  corresponding  to  the  Stoic 
and  Kantian  Ethics  of  Eeason,  we  must  go  back  to  the 
precursors  of  the  Epicurean  school,  the  early  Cyrenaics. 
So  complete  is  their  confidence  in  sensibility,  that  they 
surrender  reason  to  it,  or  rather  resolve  reason  into  it ; 
Sensationalists  in  intellectual  theory,  in  ethics  they  are 
Hedonists.  Since  momentary  feeling  is  the  only  moral 
reality,  we  must,  if  we  would  enjoy  the  good  of  life, 
surrender  ourselves  to  the  pleasure  of  the  moments  as 
they  pass. 


EudcBmonism  191 

2.  Its  practical  expression. — This  theoretical  con- 
flict has  its  counterpart  in  the  practical  life  of  man, 
and  in  the  characteristic  attitudes  and  moods  of  different 
ages,  countries,  and  individuals  in  view  of  the  actual 
business  of  life.  Moral  theory  is  the  reflection  of  moral 
practice,  and  the  interest  of  the  high  debate  that  has 
raged  through  all  these  centuries  between  the  rival  ethical 
schools  has  a  practical  and  not  a  merely  scientific,  still 
less  scholastic  interest.  Party-spirit  runs  high  on  the 
question  of  the  summum  bonum,  for  every  man  has  a 
stake  in  its  settlement,  the  stake  of  his  own  nature  and 
destiny ;  and  the  side  which  each  takes,  in  practice  if 
not  in  theory,  will  be  found  to  be  the  exponent  of  that 
nature,  and  the  prophecy  of  that  destiny.  Let  us  look, 
then,  for  a  moment  at  the  practical  expression  of  this 
fundamental  ethical  dualism. 

It  is  not  only  in  the  philosophic  schools,  but  in  actual 
life,  that  we  find  the  two  moral  types — the  Stoic  and  the 
Cyrenaic.  In  all  ages  we  can  distinguish  the  rigorist, 
ascetic,  strenuous  temper  of  life  from  the  impulsive,  spon- 
taneous, luxurious ;  the  puritan  from  the  cavalier  spirit ; 
the  man  of  reason,  cool  and  hard,  from  the  man  of  feeling, 
soft  and  sensuous.  We  might  perhaps  call  the  two  types 
the  idealistic  and  the  realistic.  In  historical  epochs,  and 
in  whole  peoples,  as  well  as  in  the  individual  life,  the 
distinction  is  illustrated.  The  Greeks  were  a  sensuous 
people,  but  gradually  the  reason  found  the  life  of  sen- 
sibility unsatisfying,  and  the  Greek  spirit  took  its  flight 
to  the  supersensible  and  ideal — to  the  world  of  pure 
reason ;  they  were  realists,  they  became  idealists.  The 
result  is  found  in  Platonism,  Stoicism,  and  Neo-Platon- 
ism.  This  mystic  yearning  after  a  satisfaction  which 
the  sensible  world  cannot  yield,  this  home- sickness  of 
a  rational  being,  is  at  the  heart  of  mediaeval  Christianity, 
with  its  monastic  ideal  and  its  anxious  denial  of  the  flesh 
for  the  sake  of  the  spirit's  life.  The  Byronic  temper 
represents  the  other  extreme.  Man  regards  himself  as 


192  The  Moral  Ideal 

a  creature  of  sensibility,  of  impulses,  of  enthusiasms  and 
exaltations,  of  weariness  and  depression, — a  kind  of 
mirror  that  reflects  the  changes  of  his  life,  or  a  high- 
strung  instrument  that  vibrates  in  quick  responsiveness 
to  them  all.  The  realism  of  contemporary  fiction  repre- 
sents the  same  one-sided  assertion  of  the  rights  of  sen- 
sibility ;  and  the  luxuriousness  and  material  comfort  of 
our  modern  life,  the  practical  utilitarian  spirit  that 
threatens  ideal  aims,  minister  to  the  same  result.  But 
the  two  forces  are  always  present  and  in  conflict. 

3.  Attempts  at  reconciliation. — Each  of  these  sides 
of  our  nature  has  its  rights,  just  because  both  are  sides 
of  our  nature,  and,  as  Aristotle  said,  life  and  virtue  must 
be  in  terms  of  nature.  In  actual  life,  we  find  either  the 
sacrifice  of  one  to  the  other,  or  a  rough  and  ready,  more 
or  less  successful,  compromise  between  their  rival  in- 
terests. The  task  of  ethical  science,  as  it  is  the  task 
of  the  moral  life  itself,  is  the  reconciliation  of  these 
apparently  conflicting  claims — the  full  recognition  both 
of  the  rights  of  reason  and  of  the  rights  of  sensibility, 
and  their  reduction,  if  possible,  to  the  unity  of  a  common 
life  governed  by  a  single  central  principle.  This  task  of 
reconciliation  was  attempted  long  ago  by  Plato,  who, 
after  condemning  sensibility  as  irrational,  yet  described 
virtue  as  essentially  a  harmony  of  all  man's  powers, — 
a  complete  life  in  which  every  part  of  his  nature,  the 
lowest  as  well  as  the  highest,  should  find  its  due  scope 
and  exercise,  all  in  subjection  to  the  supreme  authority 
of  reason.  Aristotle,  too,  though  he  reasserted  the 
Platonic  distinction  of  the  rational  and  irrational,  con- 
ceived of  man's  well-being  as  a  full-orbed  life,  which, 
while  it  was  in  accordance  with  right  reason,  embraced 
sensibility  as  well.  To  both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  how- 
ever, the  ideal  life  is  the  life  of  pure  reason — of  intel- 
lectual activity  or  contemplation. 

The  same  kind  of  reconciliation  has  been  attempted  in 


Eudcemonism  193 

modern  times,  only  in  view  of  a  deeper  realisation  of 
the  width  of  the  cleft  than  the  Greek  consciousness 
had  attained.  Hegel,  in  particular,  has  sought,  in  the 
ethical  as  in  the  metaphysical  sphere,  to  correct  the 
abstractness  and  formalism  of  the  Kantian  theory,  by 
vindicating  the  rights  of  sensibility,  and  harmonising 
them  with  the  rights  of  reason  which  Kant  had  so 
exclusively  maintained.  As,  in  the  intellectual  sphere, 
Hegel  attempts  to  vindicate  the  rights  of  sensation  and 
to  demonstrate  the  essential  identity  of  sensation  and 
thought,  so,  in  the  ethical  sphere,  he  seeks  to  prove  the 
essential  rationality  of  the  life  of  sensibility.  In  botli 
spheres  he  offers  a  concrete  content  for  the  abstract  and 
barren  form  of  the  Kantian  theory,  since  he  holds  that 
in  both  spheres  '  the  real  is  the  rational.'  This  recon- 
ciliation has  been  so  clearly  and  impressively  set  forth 
by  the  late  Professor  Green,  in  his  Prolegomena  to 
Ethics,  that  it  is  needless  to  reproduce  it  here.  But 
in  order  that  the  reconciliation  may  be  successful,  the 
conflict  must  first  be  felt  in  all  its  intensity ;  and  if 
the  ancient  moralists  tended  to  exaggerate  the  sharpness 
of  the  dualism,  the  modern  disciples  of  Hegel  may  per- 
haps be  said  to  underestimate  it.  In  that  life  of  sensi- 
bility which  the  ethical  rationalists  had  condemned  as 
the  irrational,  the  Hegelian  icfealist  sees  the  image  and 
superscription  of  reason.  Are  not  both  interpretations 
a  trifle  hasty  and  impatient  ?  Were  it  not  better  to 
follow  the  workings  of  the  moral  life  itself,  and  see 
there  how  the  antithesis  is  pressed  until  it  yields 
the  higher  synthesis  ?  If,  even  in  the  intellectual  life 
of  man,  there  is  labour,  the  '  labour  of  the  notion,'  still 
more  so  is  there  in  the  moral  life;  and  an  adequate 
ethic  must  take  account  of,  and  interpret,  this  labour. 
The  defect  of  the  Hegelian  interpretation  of  morality  is 
that  it  is  not  faithful  enough  to  the  Hegelian  method  of 
dialectical  progress  through  negation  to  higher  affirm- 
ation. The  '  everlasting  Nay '  must  be  pressed  to  the 

N 


194  The  Moral  Ideal 

last,  before  we  can  hear  the  '  everlasting  Yea '  of  the 
moral  life. 

Finally,  in  the  Rational  Hedonism  of  Professor  Sidg- 
wick  we  found  the  consummation  of  the  growing  rational- 
ism of  hedonistic  ethics.  But  Professor  Sidgwick's  theory 
is  either  a  compromise  of  the  old  sort — the  acceptance  of 
reason  as  instrumental  merely,  though  as  instrumentally 
indispensable — or  the  recognition  of  a  higher  significance 
in  reason.  In  the  former  case,  all  the  old  difficulties 
which  beset  the  hedonistic  interpretation  of  the  moral 
ideal  return.  Reason  still  exists  and  functions  for  the 
sake  of  sensibility;  its  only  raison  d'etre  is  a  larger  and 
more  complete  sentient  satisfaction.  The  only  ethical 
interest  is  the  interest  of  sensibility,  namely,  pleasure. 
And,  from  the  standpoint  of  reason  itself,  such  a  view 
must  always  appear  unworthy  and  superficial.  In  the 
other  case,  we  must  frankly  abandon  the  hedonistic 
interpretation  of  the  moral  ideal,  and,  accepting  the 
guidance  of  reason,  re-interpret  it  in  such  terms  as  shall 
give  a  new  rational  significance  to  pleasure  as  an  element 
in  the  life  of  a  rational  being.  The  ethical  interest,  not 
being  an  interest  in  pleasure  merely,  must  receive  a  new 
interpretation  from  the  point  of  view  of  reason.  This 
Professor  Sidgwick  has  not  attempted. 

4.  The  solution  of  Christianity.  —  In  Christianity 
we'  find  the  antithesis  at  its  sharpest.  It  is  just  because 
Christianity  recognises,  and  does  full  justice  to,  both  sides 
of  our  nature,  and  because  it  asserts  with  a  unique 
emphasis  the  conflict  between  them,  that  its  interpreta- 
tion of  human  life  has  been  felt  to  be  most  adequate. 
The  Greek  ideal  was  one  of  moderation  or  the  mean,  a 
measured  sensuous  life.  Christianity  widens  the  breach 
between  the  spirit  and  nature,  between  the  mind  and  the 
flesh, — widens  it  that  at  last  it  may  be  overcome.  The 
rights  of  the  spirit  are  emphasised,  to  the  negation,  in 
comparison  with  them,  of  the  rights  of  the  flesh.  The 


Eudvemonism  195 

flesh  must  be  crucified,  the  natural  man  must  die,  the  old 
man  must  be  put  off.  The  result  is  such  a  struggle 
between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  between  the  '  two  men ' 
in  each  man,  that  the  victory  seems  uncertain,  and  the 
bitter  cry  is  wrung  from  the  weary  wrestling  spirit :  "  0 
wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me  from  the 
body  of  this  death  ? "  But  this  widening  of  the  moral 
breach  is  the  necessary  first  step  in  the  life  of  goodness. 
The  ascetic  note  is  the  primary  and  fundamental  one, 
self-sacrifice  must  precede  and  make  possible  self-fulfil- 
ment, the  moral  life  is  mediated  by  death.  For  man 
rises  out  of  nature,  and  must,  as  a  spiritual  or  rational 
being,  assert  his  superiority  to  nature.  That  it  may 
guide  and  master  sensibility,  reason  must  first  assert 
itself  to  the  negation  of  sensibility.  The  true  self  is 
rational  and  spiritual;  and,  that  it  may  live,  the  lower, 
fleshly,  sensuous  self  must  die.  Only  through  this 
'  strait  gate '  is  the  entrance  to  the  pathway  of  the 
spirit's  life. 

Yet  Christianity  is  no  merely  ascetic  or  mystic  system. 
It  does  breed  in  its  disciples  a  profound  sense  of  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  actual  life,  it  does  lead  to  the  dis- 
paragement of  nature  and  sensibility ;  but  it  does  so  just 
because  it  inspires  in  them  the  conviction  of  an  ideal  of 
which  the  actual  for  ever  falls  short,  and  shows  man  how 
much  more  and  greater  he  is  than  nature.  The  sunny 
gladness  of  the  Pagan  spirit  had  to  be  darkened  by  the 
shadow  of  this  prophetic  discontent;  but  a  new  glad- 
ness came  with  Christianity.  There  can  be  no  literal 
renaissance  or  re-birth  of  Paganism.  The  spiritual  his- 
tory of  man  does  not  repeat  itself,  there  is  no  return  to 
former  stages  of  moral  experience.  The  human  spirit  has 
been  born  anew,  and  has  learned  in  Christianity  lessons 
about  its  own  dignity  and  task  and  destiny  which  it  can 
never  more  unlearn.  And  in  view  of  the  fundamental 
lesson  of  Christianity,  of  the  infinite,  eternal,  and  divine 
worth  of  the  human  spirit,  it  may  well  seem  as  if  all  else 


196  The  Moral  Ideal 

were  unworthy  to  live,  and  must  absolutely  die.  The 
good  life  is  a  rational  life,  a  life  in  which  reason,  the 
same  in  God  and  man,  must  guide  and  be  master.  Yet 
nature  has  its  rights,  though  they  are  not  independent  of 
the  supreme  rights  of  the  rational  spirit ;  and  Christianity 
recognises  the  rights  of  nature.  For  each  man  there  is  a 
crown  of  joy,  though  the  way  to  it  lies  through  the  pain 
and  toil  and  death  of  the  cross.  As  in  the  victorious 
march  of  the  Eoman  arms,  the  vanquished  territory  of 
nature  is  not  ravaged  and  laid  waste ;  the  conquering 
reason  annexes  nature,  the  kingdom  of  nature  and  the 
flesh  becomes  the  kingdom  of  the  rational  spirit.  The 
whole  man  is  redeemed  from  evil  to  goodness ;  the  old 
becomes  new.  There  is  a  re-birth  of  the  entire  being ; 
nothing  finally  dies,  it  dies  only  to  rise  again  to  its  true 
life.  All  lives  in  the  new,  transfigured,  spiritual  life; 
all  becomes  organic  to  the  one  central  principle,  an  ele- 
ment in  the  one  total  life.  The  '  world '  becomes  part 
of  the  '  kingdom  of  God.'  All  other,  separate  and  rival, 
interests  die,  because  they  are  all  alike  superseded,  tran- 
scended, and  incorporated  in  this  one  interest.  Nay,  the 
individual  self,  in  so  far  as  it  insists  upon  its  separate 
and  exclusive  life,  upon  its  own  peculiar  and  private 
interests,  must  die.  The  '  world  '  is  indeed  just  the 
sphere  of  this  narrow  selfish  '  self,'  and  both  together  must 
be  superseded.  "  It  is  no  more  I  that  live."  But  the  nar- 
row and  selfish  self  dies,  that  the  larger  and  unselfish  self 
may  live.  Only  he  that  so  loseth  his  life  shall  truly  find  it. 
All  this  is  symbolised  in  Christianity  in  the  incarna- 
tion, death,  and  resurrection  of  its  Founder.  The  idea  of 
incarnation — the  root-idea  of  Christianity — is  a  splendid 
and  thoroughgoing  protest  against  the  ascetic  view  of 
matter  as  in  its  very  essence  evil,  of  the  body  as  the 
mere  prison-house  of  the  soul,  to  be  escaped  from  by 
the  aspiring  spirit,  something  between  which  and  God 
there  can  be  no  contact  or  communion  any  more  than 
between  light  and  darkness.  Christianity  sees  in  matter 


Eudcemonism  197 

the  very  vehicle  of  the  divine  revelation,  the  transparent 
medium  of  the  spiritual  life,  the  great  opportunity  for  the 
exercise  of  virtue.  The  Word  was  made  Flesh — 6  Aoyoc 
aapZ  tytvtro.  Nor,  in  word  or  life,  does  Jesus  suggest 
any  aloofness  of  spirit  from  the  things  of  this  world,  any 
withdrawal  from  its  affairs  as  dangerous  to  the  soul's 
best  life,  any  superiority  to  its  most  ordinary  avocations. 
"  The  Son  of  Man  came  eating  and  drinking,"  sharing 
man's  common  life,  and  realising  the  divine  ideal  in  it. 
Even  so,  by  his  lowly  and  willing  acceptance  of  human 
life  in  the  entirety  of  its  actual  relations,  did  he  trans- 
figure that  life,  by  turning  to  divine  account  all  its  uses 
and  occasions,  by  making  of  each  an  element  in  the  life 
of  goodness.  This  transfiguration  of  human  life  was  no 
single  incident  or  crisis  in  the  career  of  Jesus ;  men  did 
not  always  see  it,  but  his  life  itself  was  one  continuous 
transfiguration.  Nay,  the  life  of  goodness  always  is  such 
a  transfiguration  ;  everything  is  hallowed  when  it  be- 
comes the  vehicle  of  the  divine  life  in  man,  nothing  is 
any  more  common  or  unclean.  Yet  the  persistent  hold- 
ing to  the  ideal  good  of  this  earthly  life  means  suffering 
and  death ;  only  so  can  the  earthly  nature  become  the 
medium  of  the  divine.  There  are  always  the  two  pos- 
sibilities for  man,  the  lower  and  the  higher;  and  that 
the  higher  may  be  realised,  the  lower  must  be  denied. 
"  From  flesh  unto  spirit  man  grows  " ;  and  the  flesh  has 
to  die,  that  the  spirit  may  live.  The  eager,  strenuous 
spirit  has  to  crucify  the  easy,  yielding  flesh.  But  the 
good  man  dies,  only  to  live  again ;  his  death  is  no  defeat, 
it  is  perfect  victory — victory  signed  and  sealed.  From 
such  a  death  there  must  needs  be  a  glorious  resurrection 
to  that  new  life  which  has  been  purchased  by  the  death 
of  the  old. 

5.  The  ethical  problem  :  the  meaning  of  self-reali- 
sation.— The  conclusion  to  which  we  are  forced  by  the 
facts  of  the  moral  life  is,  that  the  true  and  adequate  in- 


198  The  Moral  Idea  I 

terpretation  of  it  must  lie,  not  in  the  exclusive  assertion 
of  either  side  of  the  dualism,  but  in  the  discovery  of  the 
relation  of  the  two  sides  to  one  another.  In  order  to 
the  statement  of  this  relation,  we  must  have  recourse  to 
a  fundamental  principle  of  unity.  In  other  words,  we 
are  led  to  consider  the  meaning  of  self-realisation. 

As  the  watchword  of  Hedonism  may  be  said  to  be  self- 
pleasing  or  self-gratification,  and  as  that  of  Eationalism 
is  apt  to  be  self-sacrifice  or  self-denial,  so  the  watchword 
of  Eudsemonism  may  be  said  to  be  self-realisation  or  self- 
fulfilment.  It  seems,  however,  almost  a  truism  to  say 
that  the  end  of  human  life  is  self-realisation.  The  aim 
and  object  of  every  living  being,  of  the  mere  animal  as 
well  as  of  man — nay,  of  the  thing  as  well  as  the  animal 
and  the  person — may  be  described  as  self-preservation 
and  self-development,  or  in  the  single  term  '  self-realisa- 
tion.' In  a  universe  in  which  to  '  exist '  means  to 
'  struggle,'  self  -  assertion,  perseverare  in  esse  suo,  may 
be  called  the  universal  law  of  being.  Moreover,  every 
ethical  theory  might  claim  the  term  '  self-realisation,'  as 
each  might  claim  the  term  '  happiness.'  The  question 
is,  What  is  the  self  ?  or,  Which  self  is  to  be  realised  ? 
Hedonism  answers,  the  sentient  self ;  Eationalism,  the 
rational  self;  Eudaemonism,  the  total  self,  rational  and 
sentient.  The  ethical  problem,  being  to  define  self-reali- 
sation, is  therefore  in  its  ultimate  form  the  definition  of 
selfhood  or  personality.  When  we  wish  to  describe  the 
characteristic  and  peculiar  end  of  human  life,  we  must 
either  use  a  more  specific  term  than  self-realisation,  or 
we  must  explain  the  meaning  of  human  self-realisation 
by  defining  the  self  which  is  to  be  realised.  And  since 
man  alone  is,  in  the  proper  sense,  a  self  or  person,  we 
are  led  to  ask  :  What  is  it  that  constitutes  his  personality, 
and  distinguishes  man,  as  a  person,  from  the  so-called 
animal  or  impersonal  self  ?  The  basis  of  his  nature 
being  animal,  how  is  it  lifted  up  into  the  higher  sphere  of 
human  personality  ? 


JSudcemonism  199 

6.  Definition  of  personality  :  the  individual  and  the 
person. — Selfhood  cannot  consist  in  mere  individuality ; 
for  the  animal,  as  well  as  the  man,  is  an  individual  self 
— a  self  that  asserts  itself  against  other  individuals,  that 
excludes  the  latter  from  its  life,  and  struggles  with  them 
for  the  means  of  its  own  satisfaction.  Man  is  a  self  in 
this  animal  sense  of  selfhood :  he  is  a  being  of  impulse,  a 
subject  of  direct  and  immediate  wants  and  instincts  which 
demand  their  satisfaction,  and  prompt  him  to  struggle 
with  other  individuals  for  the  means  of  such  satisfaction. 
These  impulsive  forces  spring  up  in  man  as  spontaneously 
as  in  the  animal,  their  '  push  and  pull '  is  as  real  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other.  And  if  might  were  right,  these 
forces  in  their  total  workings  would,  constitute  the  man, 
as  they  seem  to  constitute  the  animal ;  and  the  resultant 
of  their  operations  would  be  the  only  goal  of  the  former, 
as  of  the  latter  life.  But  might  is  not  right  in  human 
life ;  it  is  this  distinction  that  constitutes  morality.  As 
the  Greeks  said,  man  is  called  upon  to  '  measure '  his 
impulses — in  temperance  or  moderation  lies  the  path  to 
his  self-fulfilment ;  and  the  measure  of  impulse  is  found 
in  '  right  reason.'  That  is  to  say,  man,  as  a  rational 
being,  is  called  upon  to  bring  impulse  under  the  law  of 
the  rational  self ;  man  is  a  rational  animal.  Butler  and 
Aristotle  agree  in  this  definition  of  human  nature  and 
in  this  view  of  human  life.  In  Aristotle's  opinion,  that 
which  differentiates  man  from  other  beings  is  his  posses- 
sion of  reason,  and  the  true  human  life  is  a  life  '  according 
to  right  reason.'  The  distinctive  characteristic  of  man, 
according  to  Butler,  is  that  he  has  the  power  of  reflecting 
upon  the  immediate  animal  impulses  which  sway  him,  and 
of  viewing  them,  one  and  all,  in  relation  to  a  permanent 
and  total  good.  In  this  critical  and  judicial  '  view  '  of  the 
impulsive  and  sentient  life  consists  that  'conscience'  which 
distinguishes  man  from  the  animal  creation,  and  opens  to 
him  the  gates  of  the  moral  life,  which  are  for  ever  closed 
to  it. 


200  The  Moral  Ideal 

It  is  this  self-consciousness,  this  power  of  turning  back 
upon  the  chameleon-like,  impulsive,  instinctive,  sentient 
or  individual  self,  and  gathering  up  all  the  scattered 
threads  of  its  life  in  the  single  skein  of  a  rational  whole, 
that  constitutes  the  true  selfhood  of  man.  This  higher 
and  peculiarly  human  selfhood  we  shall  call '  personality/ 
as  distinguished  from  the  lower  or  animal  selfhood  of 
mere  '  individuality  ' ;  and,  in  view  of  such  a  definition  of 
the  self,  we  may  say  that  self-realisation  means  that  the 
several  changing  desires,  instead  of  being  allowed  to  pursue 
their  several  ways,  and  to  seek  each  its  own  good  or  satis- 
faction, are  so  correlated  and  organised  that  each  becomes 
instrumental  to  the  fuller  and  truer  life  of  the  rational  or 
human  self.  This  power  of  rising  above  the  impulse  of 
the  moment,  and  of  viewing  it  in  the  light  of  his  rational 
selfhood  ;  this  power  of  transcending  the  entire  impulsive, 
instinctive,  and  sentient  life,  and  of  regarding  the  self 
which  is  but  the  bundle  of  impulses  as  the  servant  of  the 
higher  rational  self,  is  what  makes  man,  ethically,  man. 
It  is  this  endowment  that  constitutes  '  will.'  We  do  not 
attribute  will  to  the  animal,  because,  so  far  as  we  know,  it 
cannot,  as  we  can,  arrest  the  stream  of  impulsive  tendency, 
but  is  borne  on  the  tide  of  present  impulse.  That  is  a 
life  '  according  to  nature '  for  it ;  in  such  a  life  it  realises 
the  only  '  self '  it  has  to  realise.  But  man,  as  we  have  seen, 
can  take  the  larger  view  of  reason,  and  can  act  in  the  light 
of  that  better  insight.  It  is  given  to  him  to  criticise  the 
impulsive  'stream,'  to  arrest  and  change  its  course,  to 
subdue  the  lower,  animal,  natural  self  to  the  higher, 
human,  rational  self ;  to  build  up  out  of  the  plastic  raw 
material  of  sensibility,  out  of  the  data  of  mere  native  dis- 
position, acted  upon  by  and  reacting  upon  circumstances 
or  environment,  a  stable  rational  character.  We  do  not 
attribute  '  character '  to  the  mere  animal ;  its  life  is  a  life 
of  natural  and  immediate  sensibility,  unchecked  by  any 
thought  of  life's  meaning  as  a  whole.  In  its  life  there  is 
no  conscious  unity  or  totality.  But  for  man,  the  rational 


Eudcemonism  201 

animal,  the  natural  life  of  obedience  to  immediate  sen- 
sibility is  not  a  life  '  according  to  nature/  according  to 
his  higher  and  proper  nature  as  man.  All  his  natural 
tendencies  to  activity,  all  the  surging  clamant  life  of 
natural  sensibility,  must  be  criticised,  adjudged,  approved 
or  condemned,  accepted  or  rejected,  by  the  higher  insight 
of  reason  which  enables  him  to  see  his  life  in  its  meaning 
as  a  whole.  His  life  is  not  a  mere  struggle  of  natural 
tendencies  ;  he  is  the  critic,  as  well  as  the  subject,  of  such 
promptings :  and  it  is  as  critic  of  his  own  nature  that  he 
is  master  of  his  own  destiny.  Just  in  so  far  as  he  makes 
impulse  his  minister,  as  he  is  master  of  impulse,  or  is 
mastered  and  defeated  by  it,  does  man  succeed  or  fail  in 
the  task  of  self-realisation. 

7.  The  rational  or  personal  self :  its  intellectual 
and  ethical  functions  compared.  —  Thus  interpreted, 
the  business  of  self-realisation  might  be  described  as  a 
work  of  moral  synthesis.  Since  the  time  of  Kant,  epis- 
temology  has  found  in  rational  synthesis  the  fundamental 
principle  of  knowledge.  Green  has  elaborated  the  paral- 
lel, in  this  respect,  between  knowledge  and  morality,  and 
shown  us  the  activity  of  the  rational  ego  at  the  heart 
of  both.  Professor  Laurie,  in  his  conception  of  '  will- 
reason,'  has  also  emphasised  the  identity  of  the  process 
in  both  cases.  The  task  of  the  rational  ego  is,  in  the 
moral  reference,  the  organisation  of  sensibility,  as,  in  the 
intellectual  case,  it  is  the  organisation  of  sensation.  Im- 
pulses and  feelings  must,  like  sensations,  be  challenged  by 
the  self,  criticised,  measured,  and  co-ordinated  or  assigned 
their  place  in  the  ego's  single  life.  The  insight  of  reason 
is  needed  for  this  work  of  organisation  or  synthesis,  as 
Plato  and  Aristotle  saw.  As,  in  the  construction  of  the 
percept  out  of  the  original  sensation,  the  ego  recognises, 
discriminates  between,  selects  from,  and  combines  the 
sensations  presented,  and  thus  forms  out  of  them  an 
object  of  knowledge  ;  so,  in  the  construction  of  the  end 


202  The  Moral  Ideal 

out  of  the  original  impulse,  we  find  the  same  recognition, 
discrimination,  selection,  and  organisation  of  the  crude 
data  of  sensibility.  Only  through  this  synthesis  of  the 
manifold  of  sensibility,  through  this  reduction  of  its 
several  elements  to  the  common  measure  of  a  single 
rational  life,  can  the  ego  constitute  for  itself  moral  ends, 
and  a  supreme  end  or  ideal  of  life. 

Following  the  clue  of  the  epistemological  parallel,  we 
find  that  Hedonism  in  ethics  rests  upon  the  same  kind 
of  psychological  '  atomism '  as  that  which  forms  the  basis 
of  the  sensationalistic  or  empirical  theory  of  knowledge. 
Hedonism  rests  upon  the  atomism  of  the  separate  individ- 
ual feeling  or  impulse,  as  Sensationalism  rests  upon  the 
atomism  of  the  separate  individual  sensation.  A  thorough- 
going empiricism,  whether  in  ethics  or  in  epistemology, 
fails  to  see  the  need  of  rational  synthesis  or  system.  The 
empiricist  seems  to  think  that  the  atoms  of  sensation 
or  of  sensibility  will  mass  themselves;  he  endows  them 
with  a  kind  of  dynamical  property.  And  it  is  true  that 
sensibility,  like  sensation,  already  contains  within  itself 
a  kind  of  synthesis,  that  there  is  a  certain  continuity  in 
the  sentient  as  in  the  sensational  life ;  that  each  is  to  be 
regarded  rather  as  a  stream  than  as  the  several  links  of 
a  chain  not  yet  in  existence.  But  this  elementary  syn- 
thesis must  be  supplemented  in  either  case  by  the  higher 
and  completer  synthesis  of  reason,  if  we  would  pass  from 
the  level  of  the  animal  to  the  higher  level  of  human  life. 
Feeling  gives  a  '  fringe  '  or  margin,  narrower  or  broader — 
association  more  or  less  intimate — but  system  comes  with 
reason.  To  be  unified  or  systematised,  feeling  must  be 
idealised  or  intellectualised.  Morality  is  the  constant 
dictation  of  idea  to  existence,  the  continual  chastisement 
of  feeling  by  reason.1  The  integration  of  impulse  is  the 
work  of  reason.  Man  is  more  than  a  subject  of  feeling, 

1  Mr  F.  H.  Bradley  puts  this  in  his  own  way  when  he  says  that  "  the 
'  what '  of  all  feeling  is  discordant  with  its  '  that.'  "  —  Appearance  and 
Reality,  p.  460. 


Eudcsmonism  203 

he  is  also  a  thinker  ;  and  his  thought,  as  well  as  his  feel- 
ing, has  a  bearing  upon  his  activity,  though  only  through 
his  feeling.  The  rational  '  I '  integrates  the  impulses  by 
thinking  or  conceiving  them,  by  considering  their  mean- 
ing. Like  Plato  and  Aristotle,  Butler  and  Kant  saw  that 
this  '  practical  wisdom,'  or  rational  insight  into  the  mean- 
ing of  impulse,  is  the  secret  of  self-control.  Only  through 
the  exercise  of  this  supreme  endowment  can  the  unity 
and  harmony  of  a  well-ordered  life  take  the  place  of  the 
discord  and  chaos  of  ungoverned  impulse.  The  unity  of 
moral  life  is  the  unity  of  rational  purpose. 

The  answer  of  Kant  to  epistemological  empiricism  may 
therefore  be  extended  to  ethical  empiricism.  Psychology 
itself  suggests  ,the  Kantian  answer,  and  helps  us  to  cor- 
rect it.  Feelings  and  impulses  are  not,  any  more  than 
sensations,  separate  and  atomic,  but,  even  in  their  own 
nature,  they  form  parts  in  the  continuous  stream  of  the 
mental  life.  But  the  life  of  feeling  and  impulse,  as  a 
whole,  is  '  loose  '  or  separate,  and  has  to  be  '  apperceived,' l 
or  made  an  element  in  the  life  of  the  rational  ego.  The 
dualism  of  reason  and  sensibility  is  very  real.  The  life 
of  the  spirit  is  never  smooth  and  easy,  like  the  life  of 
nature ;  there  is  always  opposition,  an  intractable  matter 
to  be  subdued  to  spiritual  form.  And  the  labour  and 
effort  of  the  spirit  is  greater,  the  matter  is  more  intrac- 
table, and  the  struggle  with  it  harder,  in  the  moral  than 
in  the  intellectual  life. 

8.  The  sentient  or  individual  self. — But  while  we 
thus  extend  to  the  ethical  life  the  transcendental  or 
Kantian  answer  to  empiricism,  we  must  be  careful  not  to 
go  to  the  other  extreme,  and  lose  the  truth  of  Hedonism. 
Ethical,  like  intellectual  empiricism,  contains  an  impor- 
tant truth.  Adopting  Kant's  terminology,  we  may  say 
that  ethical  personality  constitutes  itself  through  the 
subsumption  of  the  empirical  or  sentient  ego  by  the 
1  In  the  Kantian  sense  of  that  term. 


204  The  Moral  Ideal 

transcendental  or  rational  ego.  Neither  in  the  life  of 
the  empirical  ego  alone,  as  the  Hedonists  maintain,  nor 
in  that  of  the  transcendental  ego  alone,  as  the  ethical 
Eationalists  maintain,  but  in  the  relation  of  the  one  to 
the  other,  or  in  the  c  synthetic  unity  of  apperception,' 
does  morality  consist.  We  must  conserve  the  real,  as 
well  as  the  ideal,  side  of  the  moral  life.  The  error  of 
transcendentalism  —  whether  Kantian  or  Hegelian  —  is 
that  it  sacrifices  the  real,  ethically  as  ontologically,  to 
the  ideal,  that  it  sublimates  the  life  of  feeling  into  the 
life  of  reason.  This  is  precisely  the  error  of  the  ancient 
Greek  moralists,  the  error  of  sacrificing  the  moral  life, 
with  all  its  concrete  reality  of  living,  throbbing  human 
sensibility,  on  the  altar  of  intellect  or  cool  philosophic 
reason.  We  are  not  to  think  of  reason  as  having  exclu- 
sive interests  of  its  own,  apart  from  those  of  sensibility ; 
its  interest  is  rather  the  total  interest  of  sensibility  itself. 
By  its  peculiar  insight  and  splendid  impartiality,  reason 
secures  the  well-being  of  the  life  of  sensibility,  and, 
through  the  integration  of  its  several  conflicting  tend- 
encies in  the  conception  of  ends  and  of  a  supreme  ideal, 
effects  that  perfect  and  harmonious  sentient  satisfaction 
which  we  call  happiness.  We  must  insist  that  the  person 
is  always  an  individual;  his  personality  acts  upon,  and 
constitutes  itself  out  of,  his  individuality.  The  rational 
'  I '  must  not  merely  think,  it  must  think  the  sentient  and 
otherwise  irrational '  Me  ' ;  the  '  I '  must  live  in  the  '  Me,' 
reason  in  feeling.  The  doctrine  of  the  abstract  univer- 
sal, of  pure  rational  selfhood,  of  form  without  content, 
is  no  less  inadequate  than  the  doctrine  of  the  abstract 
particular,  of  mere  individual  sensibility,  of  content 
without  form.  In  the  moral  as  in  the  intellectual  sphere, 
the  real  is  concrete, — the  universal  in  the  particular,  such 
a  unity  of  both  as  means  the  absolute  sacrifice  of  neither. 
Such  a  moral  realism  at  once  recognises  the  truth  of 
idealism,  Kantian  or  Hegelian,  and  supplements  it  by 
a  more  adequate  interpretation  of  ethical  fact.  For, 


Eudcemonism  205 

morally  as  intellectually,  "  the  individual   alone   is  the 
real." 

9.  '  Be  a  person.' — The  key  to  the  ethical  harmony, 
then,  is  :  Be  a  person  ;  constitute,  out  of  your  natural  in- 
dividuality, the  true  or  ideal  self  of  personality.  The 
difference  between  the  life  of  man  and  that  of  nature 
is  that,  while  nature  is  under  law,  man  has  to  subject 
himself  to  law.  The  law  or  order  is,  in  both  cases,  the 
expression  of  reason ;  but  the  reason  which  shows  itself 
in  nature  as  force,  shows  itself  in  man  as  will.  Will  is 
the  power  of  self-government  which  belongs  to  a  rational 
being,  or,  as  Kant  said, '  practical  reason.'  For,  while  the 
entire  life  of  man  is  permeated  by  feeling,  and  may  even 
be  regarded  as  the  outcome  and  expression  of  feeling,  the 
law  of  that  life,  the  law  of  feeling  itself,  is  not  found  in 
feeling,  but  in  reason.  Feeling  must  become  organic  to 
reason,  the  life  of  the  former  must  become  an  element  in 
the  life  of  the  latter,  not  vice  versd.  For  feelings  do  not 
control  themselves,  as  Mill  said  the  higher  control  the 
lower,  and  as  Spencer  says  the  re-representative  control 
the  representative,  and  these  in  turn  the  presentative. 
The  representative  or  higher  feelings  have  not,  qud  feel- 
ings, any  authority  over,  or  superiority  to,  the  presentative 
or  lower.  It  is  the  rational  self  which  interprets  all  feel- 
ings by  its  self -reference,  or  by  its  synthetic  activity 
upon  them,  and  which,  by  such  self -reference,  makes 
them  higher  or  lower,  assigns  to  each  its  place  and 
value,  according  as  each  is  a  more  or  less  adequate 
vehicle  of  its  self-realisation. 

Here  we  find  the  true  autonomy  of  the  moral  life. 
The  law  of  his  life,  the  criterion  of  the  manner  and  the 
measure  of  the  exercise  of  each  impulse,  is  the  proper 
nature  or  rational  selfhood  of  the  man.  He  cannot, 
without  ceasing  to  be  man,  abjure  this  function  of  self- 
legislation,  or  cease  to  demand  of  himself  a  life  which 
shall  be  the  fulfilment  of  his  true  and  characteristic  nature 


206  The  Moral  Ideal 

as  man.  Virtue  is  not  a  spontaneous  natural  growth,  still 
less  an  original  endowment  of  nature.  Man  has  to  con- 
stitute himself  a  moral  person :  slowly  and  laboriously, 
out  of  the  original  data  of  individual  feeling  and  im- 
pulse, of  disposition  and  environment,  he  has  to  raise  the 
structure  of  ethical  manhood.  We  have  seen  that,  even 
in  the  animal  life,  there  is  an  organisation  of  impulse ; 
but  we  regard  it  as  the  result  of  instinct,  because  it  is  not 
self-planned  and  self-originated,  as  in  man's  case,  who  can 
say — "  A  whole  I  planned."  It  is  the  privilege  and  dignity 
of  a  rational  being  to  have  the  ordering  or  systematising 
of  impulse  in  his  own  hands,  to  construct  for  himself  the 
order  and  system  of  reason  in  the  life  of  sensibility.  For, 
as  Aristotle  truly  said,  nature  gives  only  the  capacity,  and 
the  capacity  she  gives  is  rather  the  capacity  of  acquiring 
the  capacity  of  virtue,  than  the  capacity  of  virtue  itself. 
The  best  reward  of  virtue  is  the  capacity  of  a  higher 
virtue ;  "  as  it  is  by  playing  on  the  harp  that  men  be- 
come good  harpers,  so  it  is  by  performing  virtuous  acts 
that  men  become  virtuous,  and  as  at  a  race  it  is  not  they 
who  stand  and  watch,  but  they  who  run,  who  receive  the 
prize,"  so  is  the  life  of  virtue  rewarded  with  the  crown  of 
a  future  that  transcends  its  past. 

10.  'Die  to  live' :  the  meaning  of  self-sacrifice. — 
But  the  course  of  true  virtue,  like  that  of  true  love,  never 
did  run  smooth.  Its  path  is  strewn  with  obstacles,  and 
its  very  life  consists,  as  Fichte  perceived,  in  the  struggle 
to  overcome  them.  The  subjection  of  the  individual,  im- 
pulsive, sentient  self  to  the  order  of  reason  is  a  Herculean 
task.  The  immensity,  the  infinity,  of  the  task  is  not 
indeed  to  be  misinterpreted,  as  if  sensibility  were  a  surd 
that  cannot  be  eliminated  from  the  moral  life.  Sensi- 
bility is  not  to  be  annihilated — in  that  case  the  moral 
task  would  be  an  impossible  and  futile  one — but  co- 
ordinated and  harmonised  with  the  rational  nature,  made 
the  vehicle  and  instrument  of  the  realisation  of  the  true 


Eudcemonism  207 

or  rational  self.  But  this  co-ordination  is  also  a  sub- 
ordination :  sensibility  must  obey,  not  govern.  Here  we 
find  the  relative  truth  of  asceticism,  and  the  deeper  truth 
of  the  Christian  principle  of  self-sacrifice.  The  higher 
or  personal  self  can  be  realised  only  through  the  death 
of  the  lower  or  individual  self,  as  lower  and  merely 
individual.  In  its  separateness  and  independence,  the 
sentient  self  must  die ;  for  there  may  not  be  two  lives, 
or  two  selves.  Individuality  must  become  an  element 
in  the  life  of  personality,  the  '  psychological  Me '  must 
become  the  organ  and  expression  of  the  rational  '  I.'  I 
must  die,  as  an  individual  subject  of  sensibility,  if  I 
would  live  as  a  moral  person,  the  master  of  sensibility. 
I  must  crucify  the  flesh  (the  Pauline  term  for  the 
natural,  impulsive,  and  sentient  or  unmoralised  man), 
if  I  would  live  the  life  of  the  spirit.  I  must  lose  my 
lower  life,  if  I  would  find  the  higher.  With  the  law  of 
the  rational  spirit  comes  the  consciousness,  and  the  fact, 
of  sin  or  moral  evil — that  is,  of  subjection  to  mere 
animal  sensibility ;  and  this  condemnation,  by  reason, 
of  the  life  that  is  not  brought  into  subjection  to  its  law 
is  a  condemnation  unto  death.  But  as  the  life  of  the 
lower  is  the  grave  of  the  higher  self,  so  from  the  death 
of  the  lower  comes  forth,  in  resurrection  glory,  the  higher 
and  true  self.  "Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the 
ground  and  die,  it  abideth  alone ;  but  if  it  die,  it  bringeth 
forth  much  fruit."  Each  selfish  impulse  (and  all  im- 
pulses, even  the  benevolent,  are  selfish,  in  the  sense  that 
each  seeks  its  own,  and  disregards  all  other  claims)  must 
be  denied,  or  brought  under  the  law  of  the  life  of  the 
total  rational  self.  Importunity  is  not  the  measure  of 
ethical  importance,  and  the  '  everlasting  N"ay '  of  such 
self-sacrifice  precedes  and  makes  possible  the  '  everlasting 
Yea '  of  a  true  self-fulfilment.  The  false,  worthless,  par- 
ticular, private,  separate  self  must  die,  if  the  true  self, 
the  rational  personality,  is  to  live. 

I  have  said  that  this  struggle,  with  its  pain  and  death, 


208  The  Moral  Ideal 

precedes  the  joy  and  peace  of  the  higher  life.  But  the 
sequence  is  logical  rather  than  chronological  ;  for,  in  truth, 
the  process  of  death  is  always  going  on,  simultaneously 
with  the  process  of  life,  or  rather  death  and  life  are  two 
constant  elements,  negative  and  positive,  in  the  life  of 
virtue  as  we  know  it.  Even  the  good  man  '  dies  daily/ 
daily  crucifies  the  flesh  anew.  Daily  the  old  or  natural 
man  is  being  put  off,  and  the  new  or  spiritual  man  put 
on.  There  is  a  daily  and  hourly  death  of  nature,  and  a 
daily  and  hourly  new  birth  and  resurrection  of  the  spirit. 
As  in  the  life  of  a  physical  organism,  disintegration 
mediates  a  higher  integration.  La  vie  c'est  la  mort.1 
Always,  therefore,  there  is  pain;  but  always,  beneath 
the  pain,  in  the  depths  of  the  moral  being,  there  is  a  joy, 
stronger  and  more  steadfast  even  than  the  pain,  in  the 
assurance  that  "  old  things  are  passing  away,  and  all 
things  are  becoming  new  "  —  the  joy  of  the  conviction 
that  the  struggle  is  worth  while,  nay,  is  the  only  thing 
that  is  ultimately  worth  while.  For  "  the  inward  man 
is  being  renewed  day  by  day,"  and,  in  the  joy  of  that 
renewal,  all  the  pity  of  the  pain  and  sorrow  that  make 
it  possible  sinks  out  of  heart  and  mind,  or  lends  but  a 
deeper  and  a  graver  note  to  the  joy  which  it  has  pur- 
chased and  made  possible.  So  ever  with  the  negative 
goes  the  positive  side  of  the  ethical  life.  The  spirit 
has  ever  more  room  and  atmosphere,  and  its  life  becomes 
richer  and  fuller  ;  as  the  flesh  becomes  a  willing  instru- 
ment in  its  hands,  it  finds  continually  new  and  higher 
ends  for  which  to  use  it. 

And  the  goal  of  the  moral  life,  the  ideal  after  which 
it  strives,  is  a  spontaneity,  a  freedom,  and  a  naturalness 
like  that  of  the  life  of  original  impulse.  As  Aristotle 
said,  virtue  is  first  activity  (Ivlpytia),  then  habit  (2£te)  ; 
tvipyfia  leads  to  a  new  Suvctjutc  (or  potentiality  of  activ- 
ity), as  well  as  Swvajutc  to  Ivip^na.  The  originally 


1  Cf.  Professor  Royce's  article  on  "The  Knowledge  of  Good  and  Evil" 
(International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Oct.  1893). 


Eudcemonism  209 

indefinite  potentiality — the  potentiality  of  either  vice  or 
virtue — becomes  a  definite  capacity  for  virtue,  and  almost 
an  incapacity  for  vice,  in  the  established  character  of  the 
good  man.  This  '  second  nature/  which  makes  virtue  so 
far  easy,  is  virtue's  best  reward.  There  is  all  the  differ- 
ence in  the  world  between  the  mere  rigorist  or  negatively 
good  man,  who  thinks  out  his  conduct,  and  whose  life  is 
a  continual  repression,  and  the  positively  good  man,  who 
knows  the  expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection,  and  whose 
goodness  seems  to  bloom  spontaneously,  like  the  flower, 
with  a  life  that  "  down  to  its  very  roots,  is  free."  The 
one  life  is  stiff,  stereotyped,  artificial ;  the  other  breathes 
of  moral  health,  and  commends  goodness  to  its  fellows. 

11.  Pleasure  and  happiness.  —  Such  a  complete 
moral  life  we  have  called  self-realisation  or  self- fulfil- 
ment. "We  might  have  called  it,  with  Aristotle,  '  happi- 
ness,' and  thus  have  reclaimed  the  word  from  the  ex- 
clusive possession  of  the  Hedonists.  The  good  must 
report  itself  in  sensibility,  it  must  satisfy  desire;  self- 
realisation  is  at  the  same  time  self-satisfaction.  But  we 
must  distinguish,  as  Aristotle  did,  between  happiness 
and  pleasure.  The  name  contains  a  reference  to  pleas- 
ure ;  but  pleasures,  even  in  their  sum,  do  not  constitute 
happiness.  Happiness  is  not  the  sum  or  aggregate  of 
pleasures,  it  is  their  harmony  or  system — or  rather,  the 
feeling  of  this  harmony.  The  distinction  between  hap- 
piness and  pleasure,  even  within  the  sphere  of  feeling, 
could  hardly  be  better  stated  than  by  Professor  Dewey :  * 
"  Pleasure  is  transitory  and  relative,  enduring  only  while 
some  special  activity  endures,  and  having  reference  only 
to  that  activity.  Happiness  is  permanent  and  universal. 
It  results  only  when  the  act  is  such  a  one  as  will  satisfy 
all  the  interests  of  the  self  concerned,  or  will  lead  to  no 
conflict,  either  present  or  remote.  Happiness  is  the 
feeling  of  the  whole  self,  as  opposed  to  the  feeling  of 

1  Psychology,  p.  293. 
0 


210  The  Moral  Ideal 

some  one  aspect  of  self."  As  misery  or  unhappiness  is 
not  pure  pain,  or  even  a  balance  of  pain  over  pleasure, 
but  lies  in  the  discord  of  pleasures,  so  happiness  lies  in 
the  harmony  of  pleasures,  or  in  the  reference  of  each  to 
the  total  self.  Happiness  is,  in  a  word,  the  synthesis  of 
pleasures.  And,  since  pleasure  is  the  concomitant  of 
activity,  happiness,  or  the  synthesis  and  harmony  of 
pleasures,  depends  upon  and  is  constituted  by  the  syn- 
thesis of  activities,  and  ultimately  by  that  supreme 
activity  of  moral  synthesis  which  we  have  been  con- 
sidering. We  thus  ascertain  the  true  place  of  feeling  in 
the  life  of  goodness,  and  the  partial  truth  of  Hedonism  as 
an  ethical  theory.  We  may,  with  Aristotle,  regard  pleas- 
ure as  the  bloom  of  the  virtuous  life,  as  the  index  and 
criterion  of  moral  progress.  But  while  self-realisation 
brings  self-satisfaction,  the  former  is  not  to  be  regarded 
as  instrumental  to  the  latter.  The  end  of  life  is  neither 
to  know  nor  to  feel,  but  to  be.  The  life  of  man's  total 
selfhood  is  its  own  end, — a  doing  which  is  the  expression 
of  being,  and  the  medium  of  higher  and  fuller  being,  of 
a  deeper  and  richer  unity  of  thought  and  sensibility. 
In  so  far  as  we  attain  that  end,  we  learn  to  "  think  clear, 
feel  deep,  bear  fruit  well."  Although  its  satisfactoriness 
is  not  its  raison  d'etre,  the  life  of  personality  is,  in  its 
very  essence,  a  completely  satisfying  life : 

"  Resolve  to  be  thyself ;  and  know,  that  he 
Who  finds  himself,  loses  his  misery." 

12.  Egoism  and  altruism. — This  interpretation  of 
self-realisation  enables  us  to  co-ordinate  and  unify,  not 
merely  the  several  elements  of  the  individual  life,  but 
also  the  several  individual  lives.  Since  each  is  not  a 
mere  individual  but  a  person,  in  the  common  personality 
of  all  is  found  the  ground  of  the  conciliation  and  har- 
mony of  the  several  individual  lives.  As  Kant  puts  it, 
each  man  being,  in  virtue  of  his  rationality,  an  end-in- 
himself  and  each  self-legislative,  there  is  found  a  common 


Eudcemonism  211 

law  :  "  So  act  as  if  thou  couldst  will  the  principle  of  thine 
act  law  universal."  Every  other  person  is,  as  a  person, 
an  end-in-himself,  equally  with  me ;  my  attitude  to  him 
must  therefore  be  essentially  the  same  as  my  attitude  to 
myself.  The  law  or  formula  which  expresses  Loth  his 
life  and  mine  is  that  we  are  to  be  regarded,  whether  by 
ourselves  or  by  one  another,  always  as  ends,  never  as 
merely  means  or  instruments.  He  cannot,  any  more  than 
I,  accept  a  law  which  does  not  find  its  sanction  in  his 
own  nature  as  a  rational  self.  Here  we  find  a  common 
ground  and  meeting-place :  however  we  may  differ  in  our 
individuality,  yet  in  our  deepest  nature — in  our  rational 
personality — we  are  the  same.  We  are  the  same  in  the 
form  of  our  nature;  and  therefore  in  the  law  of  our  life, 
however  diverse  may  be  the  content. 

When  we  submit  ourselves  to  the  common  law  of 
personality,  we  cease  to  be  a  number  of  separate,  com- 
peting or  co-operating,  individuals  ;  we  together  constitute 
a  society,  a  system  or  kingdom  of  ends.  Individuality 
separates  us ;  personality  unites  us  with  our  fellows.  It 
is  as  persons  that  we  are  fellows.  It  is  thought,  not 
'  nature '  or  feeling,  that  '  makes  the  whole  world  kin.' 
Eeason  is  the  common  element,  feeling  the  particular. 
The  only  strictly  common  or  social  good  is  a  personal 
good — the  good  of  persons.  The  hedonistic  or  sentient 
good  is  subjective  and  individual — the  good  of  the  sentient 
subject  or  individual.  The  common  good  must  be  the 
product  of  reason,  not  as  excluding  feeling,  but  as  con- 
taining its  regulative  form  and  law ;  of  personality,  as 
including  and  dominating  individuality.  Here,  in  the 
general  as  in  the  individual  case,  we  find  the  clue  to  the 
harmony  and  co-ordination  of  sensibility.  Feeling,  being 
made  organic  to  rational  personality  in  each,  comes  under 
the  wider  as  well  as  under  the  narrower  law.  Since  man 
cannot,  as  a  rational  person,  separate  himself  from  his 
fellows,  and  shut  himself  up  in  his  own  individual  being, 
he  cannot  do  so  even  as  a  sentient  individual,  or  as  a  subject 


212  The  Moral  Ideal 

of  sensibility.  For  lie  is  not  two  selves,  but  one ;  his 
personality  has  annexed  his  individuality.  The  false  and 
selfish  self  has  been  sacrificed  to  the  true  self  which,  as 
rational,  is  essentially  unselfish.  This  is  the  real  unity  and 
solidarity  of  mankind.  "We  are  joined  to  one  another,  and 
breathe  the  same  atmosphere,  in  the  deeper  things  of  the 
rational  spirit,  and  therefore  also  in  the  lesser  matters  of 
our  daily  life.  Our  life  is  one,  because  our  nature  is 
one.  From  the  true  ethical  standpoint,  there  is  no  cleft 
between  egoism  and  altruism,  as  there  is  none  between 
reason  and  sensibility.  We  are  at  once  egoists  and  altru- 
ists in  every  moral  action  :  each  is  an  eyo,  and  each  sees  in 
his  brother  an  alter  ego.  The  dualism  and  conflict  here,  as 
in  the  individual  case,  arise  from  the  rebellion  of  the  in- 
dividual against  the  person.  The  claims  of  individuals 
conflict,  always  and  necessarily ;  the  claims  of  persons, 
never.  The  moral  task,  therefore,  on  its  social  as  well 
as  on  its  individual  side,  lies  in  effecting  the  subjugation 
of  individuality  to  personality,  or  in  obeying  the  law  of 
reason  which  embraces  the  lives  of  our  fellows  as  well  as 
our  own  : — "  Be  a  person,  and  respect  others  as  persons  ;  " 
subject  your  own  clamant  individuality  to  your  abiding 
rational  personality : 

"  To  thine  own  self  be  true, 
And  it  must  follow,  as  the  night  the  day, 
Thou  canst  not  then  be  false  to  any  man." 

13.  The  ethical  significance  of  law:  the  meaning 
of  duty. — The  conception  of  law,  prominent  in  the 
ethical  reflection  of  Plato  and  the  Stoics,  and  further 
emphasised  by  Christianity,  has  been  made  a  corner-stone 
of  modern  ethical  theory  by  Butler  and  Kant.  Not 
only  in  Intuitionism  and  Transcendentalism,  but  even 
in  Hedonism  and  Evolutionism,  the  conception  plays  an 
important  part.  What  significance  can  we  attach  to  it 
from  the  standpoint  of  personality  ? 

The  foregoing  discussion  has   partly   anticipated  the 


JEudcemonism  213 

answer  to  this  question.  We  have  seen  that  the  moral 
task  of  man  is  the  co-ordination  or  organisation  of  im- 
pulse into  a  system  of  rational  ends,  and  that  the  co- 
ordinating or  organising  principle  is  the  idea  of  rational 
selfhood  or  personality.  In  this  idea  of  true  human 
selfhood  is  found  the  law  of  man's  life.  It  is  a  law 
universal ;  for  while  the  content  of  these  personal  ends 
must  vary  with  the  individuality  of  the  sensible  subject, 
and  with  the  stimuli  that  excite  such  individual  sensi- 
bility, their  form  will  be  the  same  in  all,  being  constituted 
by  the  common  rational  self  in  each.  We  thus  avoid, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  formalism  of  the  Intuitional  and 
Kanti;m  ethics,  with  their  insistence  upon  mere  obedience 
to  rational,  and  therefore  universal,  law  ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  subjectivity  and  particularism  of  Hedonism, 
which  finds  the  moral  criterion  in  the  feeling  of  the 
individual  subject.  The  interpretation  of  personality  as 
including  individuality  provides  for  the  form  of  reason  a 
content  of  sensibility,  and  thus  secures  a  concrete  view  of 
the  moral  life  :  it  discovers  the  universal  in  the  particular. 
I  am  different  from  you,  for  we  are  both  individuals  ;  and 
since  our  individuality  must  colour  our  respective  ideals 
of  life,  these  ideals  are,  so  far,  different.  But  while  it 
is  the  individual  self  that  has  to  be  realised,  it  is  the 
complete  self  or  personality  of  the  individual,  in  whose 
common  life  the  individuality  of  each  must  be  taken  up 
and  interpreted  as  an  element ;  and  this  secures  a  common 
ideal  for  all. 

The  peculiar  form  or  category  of  moral  experience  is 
thus  seen  to  be  law,  duty,  or  obligation.  The  difference 
between  moral  or  spiritual  and  natural  law  is  just  the 
difference  between  the  life  of  a  being  that  shares  con- 
sciously in  reason  and  one  that  does  not.  The  uni- 
verse being  rational  through  and  through,  the  law  or 
formula  of  all  phenomena,  of  all  occurrences,  is  rational. 
But  that  law  may  be  expressed  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, by  the  being  or  merely  through  the  being.  Now 


214  TJie  Moral  Ideal 

the  law  of  the  life  of  a  rational  being  must  be  autonomy : 
moral  self-realisation  is  '  realisation  of  self  by  self.'  The 
law  of  nature's  life  is  heteronomy ;  it  is  part  of  a  larger 
system,  and  comes  under  the  law  of  that  system.  But  a 
rational  being  is  an  end-in-himself,  and  can  find  nowhere 
save  in  his  own  nature  the  law  of  his  life.  This  is  the 
prerogative  of  reason — to  legislate  for  itself,  to  be  at  once 
sovereign  and  subject  in  the  moral  kingdom,  as  it  is  at 
once  teacher  and  scholar  in  the  intellectual  school. 

The  transition  from  the  innocence,  or  non-moral  con- 
dition, of  the  animal  or  the  child  which  has  not  yet 
broken  with  nature,  but  remains  in  unconscious  subjec- 
tion to  its  law,  to  the  moral  status  in  which  law  asserts 
itself  in  the  very  consciousness  of  a  possible  and  actual 
disobedience  to  it — thus  creating  the  distinction  between 
good  and  evil — has  been  naively  represented  by  the 
imagination  of  early  man  as  a  '  fall '  from  a  previous  state 
of  bliss.  A  fall,  and  yet  also  an  ascent  in  the  scale  of 
being ;  a  fall  from  holiness,  but  an  ascent  from  innocence 
— the  ascent  from  compulsion  to  authority,  from  might 
to  right.  "  Ye  shall  be  as  gods,  knowing  good  and  evil ;  " 
"  lest  they  eat  of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil,  and  become  as  one  of  us."  Christianity 
has  touched  this  yearning  after  a  Golden  Age  in  the  past 
experience  of  the  race,  and  changed  it  into  a  yearning  after 
a  future  Golden  Age.  The  conception  of  evolution  also 
teaches  us  to  regard  human  history  as  a  progress,  not  a 
regress.  And  we  have  ourselves  seen  that  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  breach  between  the  ideal  and  the  actual,  of 
the  dualism  between  nature  and  spirit,  is  the  essential 
condition  of  a  finite  self-consciousness  and  self-realisation. 
It  may  be  that  we  cannot  explain  the  origin  of  evil ;  but, 
evil  being  there,  we  can  understand  its  moral  significance. 
Evil  is  the  shadow  cast  by  the  moral  ideal  upon  the  actual 
life.  The  sense  of  failure  comes  with  the  consciousness 
of  an  ideal ;  nature  never  fails,  man  alone  does.  And 
so  long  as  the  breach  continues  between  the  actual  and 


Eudcemonism  2  1 5 

the  ideal,  so  long  must  the  element  of  law  or  obligation 
enter  into  the  substance  of  the  moral  consciousness. 

Various  forms  of  law. — Law  or  obligation  assumes 
different  aspects  at  the  successive  stages  of  the  moral 
life  of  the  individual.  It  is  first  external,  then  internal : 
first  '  Do  this,'  then  '  Be  this.'  It  is  first  the  outer  law 
or  command,  accompanied  by  coercion  whether  of  reward 
or  punishment,  of  the  parent,  of  the  State,  of  social  opinion, 

— a  kind  of  pressure  from  his  environment,  moulding  the 
individual  from  without.  This  is  the  stage  of  passive 
and  uncritical  acquiescence  by  the  individual  in  the  con- 
ventional morality  in  whose  atmosphere  he  has  grown  up 

— the  reign  of  Custom.  As  he  advances  to  moral  man- 
hood, the  individual  passes  from  this  allegiance  to  the 
outer  law  to  the  severer  rule  of  the  law  which  he  finds 
written  in  his  own  heart.  This  is  the  stage  described 
by  Hegel  as  that  of  Moralitat,  of  the  reign  of  the  inner 
law  of  the  individual  Conscience,  of  the  assertion  of  the 
right  of  private  judgment  in  the  moral  sphere ;  the 
stage  at  which  the  life,  become  a  law  unto  itself,  is 
full  of  introspective  conscientiousness,  and  liable,  in  its 
revolt  from  the  morality  of  custom  and  convention,  to 
become  the  prey  of  individual  or  sectarian  enthusiasms 
and  fanaticisms.  Necessary  as  this  stage  is,  and  perma- 
nent as,  in  a  sense,  it  may  necessarily  be  for  the  individ- 
ual, he  must  yet  seek  to  escape  from  its  subjectivity  and 
limitation,  and  to  reach  the  insight  into  the  partial,  if 
not  complete,  identity  of  the  outer  and  the  inner  law — 
the  stage  of  '  ethicality '  or  Sittliclikeit,  the  reign  of  In- 
stitutions. Still,  the  critical  point  in  the  moral  history 
of  the  individual  is  that  at  which  the  law  passes  from 
the  outer  to  the  inner  form.  The  outer  law  is  always, 
in  truth,  from  an  ethical  standpoint,  the  reflection  of  the 
inner :  it  is  the  deepest  self  of  humanity  that  makes  its 
constant  claim  upon  the  individual  man,  and  demands  its 
realisation.  And  the  continual  criticism  of  the  outer  by 


216  The  Moral  Ideal 

the  inner  law,  of  convention  and  custom  by  conscience, 
is  the  very  root  and  spring  of  all  moral  progress.  Indeed 
the  breach  between  the  outer  and  the  inner  is  never 
entirely  healed  ;  the  ideal  State  is  never  reached. 

Its  absoluteness  and  permanence. — The  inner  de- 
mand is  absolute,  a  'categorical  imperative.'  Its  un- 
yielding '  Thou  shalt '  is  the  voice  of  the  ideal  to  the 
actual  man  ;  and  the  ideal  admits  of  no  concession,  no 
'give  and  take,'  no  compromise  with  the  actual.  This 
demand  of  the  rational  and  ideal  self  is  not  to  be  mis- 
interpreted, as  if  its  absoluteness  meant  the  annihilation 
of  feeling  or  nature.  The  demand  is  for  such  a  perfect 
mastery  of  the  impulsive  and  sentient,  or  natural  self, 
that  in  it  the  true  self,  which  is  fundamentally  rational, 
may  be  realised ;  that  it  may  be  the  rational  or  human, 
and  not  the  merely  sentient  or  animal  self,  that  lives. 
What  produces  the  constant  contradiction  between  ideal 
and  attainment,  is  not  the  presence  of  feeling  as  a  surd 
that  cannot  be  eliminated ;  it  is  that  the  harmony  of  a 
life  in  which  feeling  is  subdued  to  reason  must  become 
ever  more  perfect,  the  life  of  the  true  self  must  become 
ever  more  complete,  as  moral  progress  continues. 

For  the  demand  of  the  inner  self  for  realisation  is 
infinite.  The  self  never  is  fully  realised,  it  remains 
always  an  ideal  demanding  realisation.  Here,  in  the 
constant  ethical  conflict,  in  the  perpetual  contradic- 
tion between  ideal  and  attainment,  is  the  source  of  the 
undying  moral  consciousness  of  law  or  obligation.  Evrer 
as  we  attain  in  any  measure  to  it,  the  ideal  seems  to 
grow  and  widen  and  deepen,  so  that  it  is  still  for  us  the 
unattained.  One  mountain -path  ascended  only  reveals 
height  after  height  in  the  great  Beyond  of  the  moral  life. 
It  is  those  that  stay  on  the  plains  of  a  superficial  and  con- 
ventional morality,  who  think  they  can  see  the  summits  of 
its  hills ;  those  who  climb  know  better.  It  is  those  who 
scale  the  mountain-tops  of  duty  who  know  best  what 


Eudcemonism  217 

heights  are  yet  to  climb,  and  how  far  its  high  peaks 
penetrate  into  God's  own  heaven.  It  is  the  infinity  of 
the  ideal  self  that  makes  it,  in  its  totality,  unrealisable, 
and  the  life  of  duty  inexhaustible,  by  a  finite  being.  No 
improvement  in  environment,  physical  or  social,  can  effect 
the  entire  disappearance  of  the  contradiction  between  the 
ideal  and  its  attainment.  For  the  ideal  originates,  not 
without  but  within  ourselves,  in  '  the  abysmal  deeps  of 
personality,'  and  the  fountain  of  those  deeps  is  never 
dried  up.  The  ideal  is  always  being  realised,  it  is  true, 
in  fuller  and  richer  measure.  But  '  to  have  attained '  or 
'  to  be  already  perfect '  would  be  to  have  finished  the 
moral  life.  Such  an  absolute  coincidence  of  the  ideal  and 
the  actual  is  inconceivable,  just  because  the  good  is  the 
ideal,  and  not  a  mere  projection  of  the  actual.  The  latter 
interpretation  of  the  good  would  make  it  finite,  and 
attainable  enough  by  human  weakness ;  but  to  limit 
the  ideal  were  to  destroy  it.  The  man  inspired  with  a 
loyal  devotion  to  the  good  is  willing  to  see  the  path  of 
his  life  stretch  ever  forward  and  upward,  to  lift  up  his 
eyes  unto  the  eternal  hills  of  the  divine  holiness  itself. 
For  he  knows  that  he  has  laid  the  task  upon  himself, 
and  that,  if  failure  and  disappointment  come  inevitably 
to  him  in  the  attempt  to  execute  it,  his  is  also  the  dignity 
of  this  high  calling,  and  his  too  a  success  which,  but  for 
the  ideal  and  the  failure  which  faithfulness  to  it  reveals, 
had  been  for  him  impossible.  He  would  not  exchange 
this  human  life,  with  all  its  pain  and  weariness,  with  all 
its  humiliation  and  disappointment,  for  any  lower.  Better 
surely  this  noble  human  dissatisfaction  than  the  most 
perfect  measure  of  animal  content.  Is  not  such  failure 
only  '  the  other  side  of  success ' ;  is  not  such  discontent 
indeed  '  divine  '  ? 

To  seek  to  rise  above  duty  or  law  is,  as  Kant  said,  'moral 
fanaticism.'  Duty  is  the  peculiar  category  of  human  life, 
of  the  life  of  a  being  at  once  infinite  and  finite ;  it 
is  the  expression  of  the  dualism  of  form  and  matter,  of 


218  The  Moral  Ideal 

reason  and  sensibility.  Certainly  we  shall  not  overcome 
the  dualism  by  minimising  it ;  rather  it  must  be  pressed 
until,  it  may  be  in  another  life  or  in  prophetic  glimpses 
in  the  religious  life  even  now,  it  yields  the  higher  unity 
and  peace  for  which  our  spirits  crave.  Meantime,  it  is 
no  ignoble  bondage ;  if  the  spirit  is  imprisoned,  it  is  ever 
breaking  through  the  bars  of  its  prison-house.  Authority 
is  not  coercion.  Man  lays  the  law  upon  himself;  it  is 
because  he  is  a  citizen  of  the  higher  world,  that  he  feels 
the  obligation  of  its  law  and  the  bondage  of  the  lower. 
And  when  he  recognises  the  source  of  the  law,  it  ceases, 
in  a  sense,  to  be  a  burden ;  or  it  becomes  one  which  he 
is  willing  and  eager  to  bear,  and  which  becomes  lighter 
the  longer  and  the  more  faithfully  it  is  borne.  The  yoke 
of  such  a  service  is  indeed  easy,  and  its  burden  light. 

14.  Expressions  of  Eudaemonism  :  (a)  in  philos- 
ophy.— It  may  help  to  the  understanding,  as  well  as 
the  vindication,  of  the  general  position  above  described, 
to  glance  at  one  or  two  of  the  most  striking  expressions 
of  Eudsemonism  in  philosophy  and  in  literature.  In 
philosophy,  I  will  select  rather  from  the  Greeks  than 
from  the  moderns,  partly  because  their  contribution  to 
ethical  theory  is  less  familiar,  or  at  any  rate  less  appreci- 
ated, and  partly  because  the  modern  statements  are  in  a 
great  measure  dependent  upon  the  ancient,  and  can  be 
fully  understood  only  in  the  light  of  the  latter.  Among 
the  moderns,  we  owe  the  most  adequate  expressions  of 
Eudsemonism  to  Butler1  and  to  Hegel. 

(a)  Butler. — From  the  sketch  already  given  of  Butler's 
ethical  theory,  it  will  have  been  observed  how  much  he 
owes  to  the  Greeks.  His  leading  conceptions  of  human 
nature  as  a  civil  constitution,  of  the  authoritative  rank  of 
the  rational  or  reflective  principles,  of  the  harmony  which 
results  from  the  just  division  of  labour  among  the  various 
elements  of  our  nature,  and  the  discord  which  comes  from 

1  In  spite  of  his  official  Rationalism.     Cf.  supra,  p.  179,  Note. 


Eudcemonism  219 

their  mutual  interference  and  the  insurrection  of  the 
lower  against  the  rule  of  the  higher, — all  this  we  already 
find  in  Plato.  And  Aristotle  had,  like  Butler,  discovered 
the  secret  of  human  virtue  in  that  reason  which  is  the 
differentiating  attribute  of  human  nature. 

(/3)  Hegel. — It  is  Hegel  who,  of  all  modern  philosophers, 
has  given  most  adequate  expression  to  the  essential  prin- 
ciple of  the  ethical  life,  alike  on  its  negative  and  on  its 
positive  side.  With  Kant  he  recognises  the  full  claim  of 
reason,  but  he  insists  upon  correlating  with  it  the  rightful 
claim  of  sensibility.  In  ethics  as  in  metaphysics,  Hegel 
finds  the  universal  in  the  particular,  the  rational  in  the 
sensible.  In  the  evolution  of  the  moral,  as  of  the  in- 
tellectual life,  he  discovers  the  dialectical  movement  of 
affirmation  through  negation,  of  life  through  death ;  in 
the  one  as  in  the  other  phase  of  human  experience,  '  that 
is  first  which  is  natural,  and  afterward  that  which  is 
spiritual.'  The  life  of  natural  sensibility  is  only  the  raw 
material  of  the  moral  life ;  to  be  moralised,  it  must  be 
rationalised.  In  the  words  of  Dr  Hutchison  Stirling:1 
"  To  Hegel,  then,  even  the  body,  nay,  the  mind  itself, 
require  to  be  taken  possession  of,  to  become  in  actuality 
ours.  Culture,  education,  is  required  for  both.  The  body, 
in  the  immediacy  of  its  existence,  is  inadequate  to  the 
soul,  and  must  be  made  its  ready  organ  and  its  animated 
tool.  The  mind,  too,  is  at  first,  as  it  were,  immersed  in 
nature,  and  requires  enfranchisement.  This  enfranchise- 
ment is  in  each  subject  the  hard  labour  against  mere 
subjectivity  of  action,  and  against  the  immediacy  of 
appetite,  as  against  the  subjective  variety  of  feeling  and 
the  arbitrariness  or  caprice  of  self-will.  But  through  the 
labour  it  is  that  subjective  will  attains  to  objectivity,  and 
becomes  capable  and  worthy  of  being  the  actuality  of  the 
idea.  For  so  particularity  is  wrought  into  universality, 
and  through  universality  becomes  the  concrete  singular." 

Yet  this  '  concrete  singular '  of  the  universalised  pav- 

1  Lectures  on  The  Philosophy  of  Law,  p.  42. 


220  The  Moral  Ideal 

ticular  or  the  rationalised  sensibility  is  not,  for  Hegel, 
the  person ;  for  him  personality  is  only  a  provisional 
category,  not  the  ultimate  category  of  the  moral  life. 
Hegel's  '  person '  is  the  legal  person,  the  subject  of  rights  ; 
not  the  moral  person,  strictly  objective  and  rational. 
Hence  the  principle,  "  Be  a  person,  and  respect  others  as 
persons,"  represents  for  him  only  a  stage  in  the  ethical 
life,  to  be  transcended  in  its  perfect  development.  It  is 
of  the  essence  of  his  pantheistic  metaphysic  to  sink  the 
personality  of  man  in  the  universal  life  of  God,  and  to 
conceive  human  life  as  ultimately  modal  and  impersonal 
rather  than  as  substantive  and  personal.  Yet  Hegel  does 
much  for  the  conception  of  personality,  both  in  the  in- 
tellectual and  in  the  moral  reference  ;  and  even  if  we  dis- 
regard his  final  metaphysical  construction,  we  shall  find  in 
his  philosophy  as  striking  and  adequate  ethical  statements 
as  are  to  be  found  anywhere.  Take,  for  example,  this  state- 
ment of  the  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the 
person :  "  In  personality,  indeed,  it  lies  that  I,  as  on  all 
sides  of  me,  in  inward  desire,  need,  greed,  and  appetite, 
and  in  direct  outward  existence,  this  perfectly  limited 
and  finite  individual,  am  yet,  as  person,  infinite,  universal, 
and  free,  and  know  myself,  even  in  my  finitude,  as  such." 
But  our  indebtedness  to  Hegel  and  his  school  for  the 
position  we  have  reached  is  so  great  as  to  have  neces- 
sarily forced  itself  upon  the  reader's  attention,  and  to 
render  superfluous  any  further  illustrations  from  that 
quarter  at  the  present  stage.  Let  us  turn,  then,  to  the 
Greeks,  to  whom  Hegel  would  be  the  first  to  acknowledge 
his  own  indebtedness. 

(y)  Plato. — Whether  one  takes  Plato's  psychology  or 
his  ethics  (and  they  are  inseparable)  one  is  equally 
surprised  at  the  completeness  of  his  apprehension  of  the 
eudaemonistic  interpretation  of  the  moral  life.  He  dis- 
tinguishes three  elements  in  human  nature — reason,  spirit, 
and  appetite  (Xoyog,  Ov/uoc,  TO  tTriOv/nr^TiKov).  Reason  is  a 
unity,  so  also  is  spirit ;  but  appetite  is  manifold.  Further, 


Eudcemonism  221 

while  both  spirit  and  appetite  are  impulsive  in  their 
nature,  their  relation  to  reason  is  not  the  same.  Appetite 
is  antagonistic  to  reason,  and  is  strictly  irrational  (TO 
nXojiaTiKov)  ;  spirit  is  reason's  natural  ally — reason's 
watch-dog  sent  forth  to  curb  the  alien  force  of  appetite, 
and  again  recalled  and  kept  in  check  by  its  master  reason. 
Here  we  find  a  recognition,  first,  of  the  dependence  of 
reason  upon  sensibility  for  the  execution  of  its  own 
ends,  and,  secondly,  of  the  seeds  in  the  human  soul  alike 
of  harmony  and  discord  with  the  ends  of  reason.  The 
various  elements  have  in  them  the  possibility  of  harmony 
as  well  as  of  discord ;  and  it  is  for  reason,  which  possesses 
the  key  to  the  harmony,  to  use  the  force  provided  to  its 
hand  in  the  impulsive  nature  for  the  harmonising  of  these 
diverse  elements. 

The  figure  of  the  '  charioteer  '  has  the  same  lesson.  The 
charioteer  is  the  rational  self,  whose  function  it  is  to 
guide  the  journey  of  the  soul.  But  the  charioteer  were 
helpless  without  the  steeds ;  his  is  the  guidance  only,  it 
is  theirs  to  perform  the  journey.  And,  again,  there  are 
two  steeds ;  and  while  the  one  is  rebellious,  like  the 
horde  of  ungoverned  appetites  that  would  disturb  the 
fair  order  of  reason  in  the  life  of  the  soul,  the  other  is, 
like  the  rationally-minded  spirit,  apt  to  obey  the  rein  of 
the  wise  charioteer.  "Let  our  figure  be  of  a  composite 
nature — a  pair  of  winged  horses  and  a  charioteer.  Now 
the  winged  horses  and  the  charioteer  of  the  gods  are  all 
of  them  noble,  and  of  noble  breed,  but  our  horses  are 
mixed :  moreover,  our  charioteer  drives  them  in  a  pair ; 
and  one  of  them  is  noble  and  of  noble  origin,  and  the 
other  is  ignoble  and  of  ignoble  origin ;  and  the  driving, 
as  might  be  expected,  is  no  easy  matter  with  us."  That 
soul  "  which  follows  God  best  and  is  likest  to  him  lifts 
the  head  of  the  charioteer  into  the  outer  world,  and  is 
carried  round  in  the  revolution,  troubled  indeed  by  the 
steeds,  and  with  difficulty  beholding  true  being ;  while 
andther  rises  and  falls,  and  sees  and  again  fails  to  see, 


222  TJie  Moral  Ideal 

by  reason  of  the  unruliness  of  the  steeds.  The  rest  of 
the  souls  are  also  longing  after  the  upper  world,  and  they 
all  follow,  but  not  being  strong  enough  they  are  carried 
round  in  the  deep  below,  plunging,  treading  on  one 
another,  striving  to  be  first ;  and  there  is  confusion  and 
the  extremity  of  effort,  and  many  of  them  are  lamed,  or 
have  their  wings  broken  through  the  ill-driving  of  the 
charioteers."  ]  But  let  the  charioteer  only  do  his  driv- 
ing well,  holding  the  rein  tightly  over  the  unruly  steed 
of  earthly  passion,  and  it,  too,  will  be  guided  into  the 
upward  path,  and  will  at  last  become  the  other's  fellow 
there.  "  For  the  food  which  is  suited  to  the  highest 
part  of  the  soul  comes  out  of  that  meadow,  and  the  wing 
on  which  the  soul  soars  is  nourished  with  this." 

And,  once  more,  the  highest  life  of  the  soul,  the  life  of 
philosophic  contemplation,  so  far  from  being  a  passionless 
life  of  pure  thought,  is  itself  an  intensely  passionate  life. 
For  the  supremely  true  and  good  is  also  the  supremely 
beautiful,  and  the  soul  that  is  weaned  from  the  beauties 
of  the  merely  sensible  world  is  rapt  in  the  passion  of 
that  beauty  absolute  and  eternal,  which  is  imparted  to  the 
ever-growing  and  perishing  beauties  of  all  other  things. 
"  He  who,  under  the  influence  of  true  love,  rising  upwards 
from  these,  begins  to  see  that  beauty,  is  not  far  from  the 
end.  And  the  true  order  of  going  or  being  led  by  another 
to  the  things  of  love,  is  to  use  the  beauties  of  earth  as 
steps  along  which  he  mounts  upwards  for  the  sake  of  that 
other  beauty,  going  from  one  to  two,  and  from  two  to  all 
fair  forms,  and  from  fair  forms  to  fair  practices,  and  from 
fair  practices  to  fair  notions,  until  from  fair  notions  he 
arrives  at  the  notion  of  absolute  beauty,  and  at  last 
knows  what  the  essence  of  beauty  is.  This  ...  is  that 
life  above  all  others  which  man  should  live,  in  the  con- 
templation of  beauty  absolute.  .  .  .  What  if  man  had 
eyes  to  see  the  true  beauty — the  divine  beauty,  I  mean, 
pure  and  clear  and  unalloyed,  not  clogged  with  the  pol- 

1  Phcedrus,  248  ( Jowett's  trans. ) 


Eudcemonism  223 

lutions  of  mortality,  and  all  the  colours  and  vanities  of 
human  life — thither  looking,  and  holding  converse  with 
the  divine  beauty,  divine  and  simple  ?  Do  you  not  see 
that  in  that  communion  only,  beholding  beauty  with  the 
eye  of  the  mind,  he  will  be  enabled  to  bring  forth,  not 
images  of  beauty,  but  realities  (for  he  has  hold  not  of  an 
image  but  of  a  reality),  and  bringing  forth  and  nourish- 
ing true  virtue,  to  become  the  friend  of  God  and  be 
immortal,  if  mortal  man  may."  And  Socrates  adds,  that 
"in  the  attainment  of  this  end  human  nature  will  not 
easily  find  a  better  helper  than  love.  And  therefore,  also, 
I  say,  that  every  man  ought  to  honour  him,  as  I  myself 
honour  him,  and  walk  in  his  ways,  and  exhort  others  to 
do  the  same,  and  praise  the  power  and  spirit  of  love, 
according  to  the  measure  of  my  ability  now  and  ever." l 
For  the  loves  of  earth  are  our  schoolmasters  to  bring  us 
at  last,  when  all  the  tempest  of  the  soul  is  laid,  and  all 
its  passions  purified  and  ennobled,  unto  the  heavenly  love, 
the  love  of  God  Himself. 

Plato's  central  ethical  conception  is  cast  in  the  mould 
of  his  psychology.  It  is  that  of  a  perfect  harmony  of 
all  the  elements  of  the  soul.  The  good  life  is  for  him 
the  musical  life ;  the  life  of  a  soul  perfectly  attuned  to 
reason  cannot  but  'make  music.'  His  favourite  figure 
is  that  of  the  State ;  the  true  soul,  like  the  true  State, 
will  act  as  a  unit,  the  sovereign  will  of  the  whole  being 
accepted  by  each  of  the  parts.  The  sovereign  element 
in  the  soul  is,  of  course,  reason,  whose  insight  into  the 
common  good  fits  it  to  plan  for  the  whole  and  to  com- 
pose the  symphony  of  its  common  life.  But  if  there 
is  to  be  sovereignty,  there  must  also  be  subjection  and 
submission ;  and  the  subject-class  is  the  brood  of  appe- 
tites,— the  artisans  and  labourers  of  the  city  of  the  soul, 
to  be  kept  under  and  controlled,  for  they  have  no  self- 
control.  The  '  spirit '  fulfils  the  military  and  executive 
office,  enforcing  the  behests  of  reason  in  the  sphere  of 

1  Symposium,  210-212  (Jowett's  trans.) 


224  The  Moral  Ideal 

sensibility.  Thus  the  harmony  has  two  sides — a  negative 
and  a  positive;  it  is  at  once  temperance,  or  self-control, 
and  justice,  or  self-realisation.  If  the  order  of  reason  is 
to  be  maintained,  the  disorder  of  sensibility  must  be  put 
down ;  if  the  good  of  the  whole  is  to  be  attained,  the  in- 
surrection of  the  parts  against  the  whole  must  be  quelled. 
Temperance,  or  the  non-interference  of  any  part  with  the 
proper  work  of  another  part,  is  no  less  essential  than 
justice,  or  the  doing  of  its  own  work  by  each  part  of  the 
soul.  The  essential  evil  in  this  spiritual  city  is  the 
claim  of  the  part  to  be  the  whole — the  evil  of  disinte- 
gration. The  unjust  life  is  the  intemperate  or  rebellious, 
the  discordant  life.  Justice  is  "the  health  and  beauty 
and  well-being  of  the  soul,"  the  integrity  of  the  nature ; 
injustice  is  the  "  disease  and  deformity "  which  come 
from  the  uprising  of  the  part  against  the  whole,  of 
the  inferior  against  the  superior  principle.  The  life  of 
righteousness  is  the  life  of  the  integrated  and  harmonised 
nature,  which  has  reduced  itself  from  a  mere  manifold  of 
sensibility  to  the  unity  of  rational  system  (tva 
tK  TroXXwv),  and  attained  to  friendship  with  itself 
ywofttvov  tavTty}.  But  we  have  seen  that  there  are  in 
human  nature  the  seeds  of  discord  as  well  as  harmony, 
of  war  as  well  as  peace,  of  disease  as  well  as  health ;  and 
its  true  welfare  must  be  reached  through  stern  discipline 
and  hard  struggle.  This  struggle  is  the  fight  of  clear 
reason  against  blind  irrational  impulse ;  and  victory 
comes  with  the  opening  of  the  eyes  of  impulse  to  see 
that  larger  rational  good  which  includes  its  own. 

(S)  Aristotle. — Aristotle's  term  for  the  good  is  tvSat- 
/uovta,  and  the  entire  spirit  of  his  ethics  is  eudeernonistic. 
I  will  here  signalise  only  one  or  two  of  his  fundamental 
ethical  ideas,  and  suggest  their  interpretation  in  the  line 
of  the  theory  here  called  by  his  own  term,  Eud£emonism. 

In  the  first  place,  Aristotle  recognises  the  difference 
between  a  moral  and  a  natural  development  or  self- 
realisation,  between  the  ethical  and  the  physical  process. 


Eudamonism  225 

In  both  cases  we  have  the  actualisation  of  the  potential, 
but  the  manner  of  the  actualisation  is  different  in  the 
two  cases.  In  nature  the  potentiality  is  a  single  and 
necessary  one, — the  acorn  can  only  become  the  oak,  the 
boy  the  man.  In  morality  there  is  always  a  double  or 
alternative  potentiality, — a  man  may  become  either  vir- 
tuous or  vicious.  It  is,  moreover,  by  doing  the  same 
things,  only  in  a  different  way,  that  either  of  the  alter- 
native potentialities  is  actualised.  As  it  is  by  playing 
on  the  harp  that  men  become  either  good  or  bad  harpers, 
—by  playing  well  that  they  become  good,  by  playing  ill 
that  they  become  bad  musicians,  so  it  is  with  all  the 
activities  of  life;  in  the  same  activities  are  the  begin- 
nings of  both  good  and  evil  habits,  of  both  the  virtues 
and  the  vices.  Whether  a  man  becomes  virtuous  or 
vicious,  depends  on  the  manner  of  these  activities. 

Whether  he  becomes  virtuous  or  vicious,  however,  he 
has  only  actualised  the  character  which  already  existed 
in  him  potentially.  The  seeds  of  the  particular  vice  or 
virtue  which  reveals  itself  in  his  character  lay  in  his 
original  nature  and  the  circumstances  of  his  lot.  For  it 
is  not  in  the  choice  of  the  absolute  mean,  but  of  the 
mean  relative  to  the  individual,  that  virtue  lies.  Virtue 
is  universal  and  not  of  private  interpretation,  for  it  is 
always  "  according  to  right  reason  " ;  but  it  is  also  par- 
ticular, and  constituted  by  individual  temperament  and 
concrete  circumstances  (the  latter  being  called  by  Aris- 
totle "  furniture  of  fortune  "),  or  "  as  a  wise  man  would 
decide."  Virtue  and  vice  are  the  correlates  of  the  indi- 
viduality, and  of  its  opportunities  of  actualisation;  nor 
does  Aristotle  hold  that  these  elements  of  idiosyncrasy 
can  be  eliminated,  or  the  concrete  life  of  man  contained 
within  the  limits  of  an  exact  mathematical  formula.  If 
his  moral  ideal  is,  in  a  sense,  universal  and  absolute — an 
ideal  of  reason,  it  is  also,  in  a  sense,  particular  and 
relative — an  ideal  of  sensibility. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Mean  is  itself  most  significant  of 


226  The  Moral  Ideal 

its  author's  regard  for  the  life  of  sensibility,  as  well  as 
for  that  of  reason.  Vice  consists  in  excess  or  defect  of 
that  which,  in  itself  and  in  its  appropriate  measure,  is 
good.  And  if  in  reason  he  finds  the  common  measure  of 
sensibility,  he  yet  admits,  as  we  have  just  seen,  that  this 
rational  measure  must  be  modified  by  a  fresh  reference 
to  sensibility  itself ;  that,  in  a  way,  sensibility  also  is  a 
measure. 

In  his  psychology  Aristotle  may  be  said  to  anticipate 
the  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the  person  in 
his  distinction  between  the  irrational  (or  non-rational), 
passive,  nutritive  and  animal  soul,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  rational,  active,  creative  soul,  on  the  other  ;  as  well  as 
in  his  interpretation  of  the  latter  as  the  true  being  and 
perfect  actualisation  of  the  former.  But  the  real  psycho- 
logical basis  of  Aristotle's  ethical  Eudeemonism  is  to  be 
found  in  his  conception  of  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  the 
body.  The  soul  is  for  him  the  '  entelechy  '  of  the  body,  its 
perfect  fulfilment  and  actualisation,  its  final  form,  its  very 
essence,  truth,  and  being.  This  conception  necessitates 
a  revision,  and  a  new  interpretation,  of  Aristotle's  own 
division  of  human  nature  into  rational  and  irrational 
elements.  From  this  standpoint  there  can  be  no  finally 
irrational  element  in  man,  any  more  than  in  the  universe. 
For,  in  man  as  in  the  universe,  all  matter  is  quick  with 
form  ;  the  one  is  the  potentiality,  the  other  the  actuality 
of  form.  Everywhere  we  have  the  promise  and  potency 
of  reason :  the  irrational  is  but  reason  in  the  making,  in 
the  slow  process  of  its  increasing  manifestation.  Nothing 
is  irrational,  since  in  all  things  are  the  seeds  of  reason  ; 
everything  is  irrational,  in  so  far  as  it  is  yet  unactualised 
potentiality,  or  matter  not  yet  formed. 

The  soul  or  the  self  is,  then,  the  Logos  of  the  body,  the 
articulate  expression  of  the  body's  total  meaning,  its  end 
and  its  true  being  (TO  ri  3\v  ttvai).  The  soul's  true  life 
must,  therefore,  be  the  summation  of  all  the  possibilities 
of  the  body,  such  an  activity  as  shall  be  the  perfect  ex- 


Eudcsmonism,  227 

pression  of  every  element  and  the  development  of  that 
nature  in  its  totality, — the  final  and  perfect  form,  which 
is  without  matter  because  it  has  taken  up  into  itself  all 
the  matter,  and  expressed  it,  leaving  nothing  out.  The 
only  evil,  the  only  irrational  life,  would  be  that  in  which 
the  process  of  the  victorious  reason  was  arrested,  and  in 
which  that  was  accounted  as  form  which  was  not  yet  the 
final  form,  but,  to  him  who  had  seen  its  form,  only  matter 
after  all.  The  essence  of  evil  would  be  to  act  as  if  we 
had  already  attained  or  were  already  perfect,  instead  of 
pressing  toward  the  mark  of  our  nature's  perfection. 
Filled  with  this  aspiration,  the  virtuous  man  is  unwilling 
to  stereotype  any  of  virtue's  forms,  however  fair,  knowing 
that  to  stay  the  process  of  the  life  of  reason  were  to  kill 
that  life. 

1 5.  (&)  Literary  expressions  of  Eudsemonism. — Let 
us  look,  finally,  at  one  or  two  of  the  most  striking  and 
comprehensive  literary  expressions  of  the  ethical  dualism 
and  of  the  process  by  which,  in  the  ethical  life,  it  is  over- 
come.    Take  first  the  Faust  story — one  of  the  most  re- 
markable of  these  expressions — in  Goethe's  treatment  of 
it.     The  temptation  of  Faust  is  to  sacrifice  the  life  of 
thought,  the  fruits,  won  by  hard  labour,  of  the  scholar's 
life,  for  a  career  of  merely  sensuous  satisfaction.     Why 
'  scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days '  ?      Why  miss 
the  pulse-beats  of  life's  keenest  joys  ?      Both  lives  he 
cannot  live ;    he  must  make  his  choice  between  them, 
and,  once  made,  the  choice  will   be  irrevocable.      The 
problem  comes  to  Faust  as  the  representative  of  the  con- 
flict between  the  spirit  of  the  elder  and  the  newer  time. 
His  has  been  the  life  of  the  mediaeval  scholar,  a  life  of 
thought  apart  from  the  world  of  actual  present  interests 
and  events  ;  and,  in  the  keen  realisation  of  the  emptiness 
of  such  a  life,  he  longs  for  contact  with  reality,  with 
nature,  with  human  passion,  with  life  in  all  its  forms. 
The  revolt  of  his  eager  unsatisfied  spirit  sends  him  forth 


228  The  Moral  Ideal 

into  the  untried  world  of  common  human  experience,  to 
seek  there  the  satisfaction  which  has  eluded  him  in  his 
scholar-life  of  seclusion  and  stern  thought.  The  new 
way  is  easy  enough ;  it  is  the  broad  smooth  path  of 
sensuous  delight,  and  crowded  with  the  multitude.  If 
Faust  can  deliberately  choose  this  life  of  carnal  pleasure, 
if  he  can  find  in  it  the  perfect  satisfaction  of  his  being 
and  accept  it  as  his  portion,  it  will  be  the  definitive  choice 
of  evil,  the  critical  surrender  of  the  higher  to  the  lower 
nature.  For  if  such  sensuousness  of  life  as  that  which 
Faust  is  now  to  put  to  the  proof,  leads  inevitably  to  sen- 
suality and  what  is  commonly  called  vice,  the  evil  lies 
in  the  sensuousness  itself,  of  which  the  sensuality  is  but 
the  full-blown  flower.  That  a  being  capable  of,  and 
therefore  called  to,  a  life  of  rational  and  strenuous  ac- 
tivity, because  of  the  pain  and  toil  and  disappointment 
implied  in  such  a  life,  should  choose  the  immediate  and 
effortless  delights  of  sensibility,  '  herein  is  sin.'  But  for 
Faust  there  is  no  satisfaction  in  the  new  life  of  which 
he  is  represented  as  making  trial  When,  first  under  an 
animal  guise,  and  then  as  Mephistopheles  himself,  the 
spirit  of  evil  appears,  we  feel  that  it  is  only  the  mani- 
festation and  externalisation  of  the  lower,  undisciplined, 
irrational  nature  which,  in  Faust  as  in  every  man,  is 
struggling  for  the  mastery  with  the  rational  and  higher 
self: 

"  Zwei  Seelen  wohnen,  ach  !  in  meiner  Brust, 

Die  eine  will  sich  von  der  andern  trennen  ; 

Die  eine  halt,  in  derber  Liebeslust, 

Sich  an  die  Welt,  mit  klammernden  Organen  ; 

Die  andre  hebt  gewaltsam  sich  vom  Dust 

Zu  den  Qefilden  hoher  Ahnen." 

But,  though  all  the  glory  of  the  world  is  spread  out  before 
Faust,  and  he  tastes  of  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and  the  lust 
of  the  eye  and  the  pride  of  life,  the  moment  never  comes 
when  he  can  say  of  it : 

"  Verweile  doch  !  du  bist  so  schon  ! " 


EudcBmonism  229 

And  deeply  though  he  falls,  we  feel  that,  even  at  the 
lowest,  he  has  fallen  only  to  rise  again,  and,  learning  the 
deeper  dissatisfaction  of  this  new  life,  to  choose  at  last, 
with  a  new  decision  wrought  by  the  strong  hand  of  a 
bitter  experience,  the  higher  way  of  the  victorious  spirit. 
The  lesson  of  the  legend,  or,  at  any  rate,  of  the  drama, 
surely  is,  that  if  a  virtue  cloistered  and  untried  is  no 
virtue  at  all,  yet  all  virtue  contains  self-sacrifice  at  its 
heart,  and  the  only  true  and  complete  self-fulfilment  is 
mediated  and  made  possible  by  self-renunciation: 

"  Und  so  lang  du  das  nicht  hast, 

Dieses  ;  stirb  und  werde  1 
Bist  da  nur  ein  triiber  Gast 
Auf  der  dunklen  Erde." 

The  imperfection  of  the  Faust  representation  is  that  the 
choice  is  pictured  as  one  between  the  life  of  knowledge 
and  the  life  of  sensuous  pleasure,  though  the  idea  of  effort 
or  labour,  as  implied  in  the  former  type  of  life,  is  strongly 
emphasised.  In  Wagner's  music -drama  of  Tannhauser, 
we  have,  in  this  respect,  a  more  adequate  portrayal  of  the 
actual  moral  conflict.  Here,  again,  the  choice  is  between 
activity  and  the  delights  of  sensibility.  As  in  the  old 
Homeric  story,  the  Siren-music  of  the  sensuous  life  sounds 
in  the  hero's  ears,  and  he  is  lulled  to  sleep  and  forgetful- 
ness  of  duty  in  the  arms  of  earthly  love.  The  escape 
is  made  with  bitterest  anguish  and  regret;  again  and 
again,  as  the  magic  song  of  the  Venus-berg  sounds  in  his 
ears,  and  its  voluptuous  strains  silence  the  solemn  music 
of  the  pilgrim-choir,  must  the  conflict  be  waged  anew, 
until  at  last  the  decisive  victory  is  won,  and  the  hard 
steep  way  of  the  pilgrims  of  the  cross  becomes  the  final 
choice. 

And  from  the  first  this  has  been  the  lesson  of  the  pro- . 
phets  and  didactic  moralists  to  their  fellows.     The  lesson 
of  Ecclesiastes  as  well  as  of  Carlyle  is  the  lesson  of  work, 
the  lesson  that  in  activity,  in  deeds,  in  the  chastening  of 


230  The  Moral  Ideal 

natural  impulse  to  the  obedience  of  rational  purpose,  lies 
man's  only  good.  The  ethical  necessity  of  self-discipline 
has  always  been  recognised.  The  Greeks,  though  they 
did  not  feel  the  bitterness  of  the  struggle  as  we  do,  yet 
recognised  it  in  their  central  conception  of  temperance  or 
self-control,  of  the  essentially  rational  character  of  the 
virtuous  life,  of  the  limit  which  the  gods  have  set  to  the 
career  of  man.  In  the  popular  reflection  of  the  classical 
world,  we  find  the  same  thought  naively  expressed  in  the 
myths  of  Fauns  and  Satyrs, — strange  half -brute,  half- 
human  creatures ;  non-moral,  and  yet,  through  their  ex- 
ternal resemblance  to  humanity,  shedding  a  grim  ironical 
light  over  human  life.  "We  have  an  impressive  recogni- 
tion of  the  same  fundamental  necessity  in  the  ancient 
Hebrew  story  of  Esau,  who,  stung  by  animal  appetite, 
sells  his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage,  and  finds  no 
place  of  repentance,  though  he  seeks  it  carefully  with 
tears.  The  Christian  conception  of  temptation,  which 
finds  such  abundant  expression  in  modern  literature,  is 
one  grand  illustration  of  it.  The  character  of  Tito  in 
George  Eliot's  Romola — the  story  of  the  evolution  of  a 
life  that  has  surrendered  itself  to  momentary  impulse  and 
desire,  of  Markheim  in  Mr  E.  L.  Stevenson's  little  sketch, 
and  many  another  psychological  study  in  the  fiction  of 
our  own  and  of  previous  times,  might  be  mentioned  in 
dramatic  illustration  of  the  possibilities  (and  the  certain- 
ties) of  evil  that  lie  in  an  undisciplined  nature.  Shakes- 
peare has  given  us  a  classical  and  unique  picture  of  such 
a  being.  The  character  of  Caliban  in  the  Tempest  seems 
to  me  to  be  a  kind  of  reductio  ad  dbsurdum  of  the  life 
of  untrained  impulse.  Caliban  is  an  impersonation  of  a 
human  animal,  such  a  monster  as  the  ancient  myths  por- 
trayed, half  man,  half  beast ;  only,  his  deformity  is  moral 
rather  than  physical.  In  his  master's  eyes  he  is  a  thing 
rather  than  a  man,  a  "  thing  of  darkness  ...  as  strange 
a  thing  as  e'er  I  look'd  on."  "  He  is  as  disproportionate 
in  his  manners  as  in  his  shape." 


Eudcemonism  231 

"  Abhorred  slave, 

Winch  any  print  of  goodness  will  not  take, 
Being  capable  of  all  ill." 

"  A  devil,  a  born  devil,  on  whose  nature 
Nurture  can  never  stick.  .  .  . 
And  as,  with  age,  his  body  uglier  grows, 
So  his  mind  cankers." 

Prospero  has  taught  him  language : 

"  You  taught  ine  language,  and  my  profit  on't 
Is,  I  know  how  to  curse." 

So  savage,  rank,  and  repulsive,  so  full  of  all  manner  of 
darkness  and  evil,  is  undisciplined  nature ;  not  beautiful 
and  richly  luxurious  as  physical  nature  is,  when  left  un- 
tended  and  untrained.  An  untrained  man,  Shakespeare 
would  seem  to  teach  us,  is  a '  monster '  of  humanity,  not 
worthy  of  the  name,  something  between  man  and  beast 
rather  than  a  man.  If  sometimes  we  disparage  the  effects 
of  civilisation  and  education,  and  long  for  'a  touch  of 
nature '  in  its  simplicity  and  untrained  directness,  let  us 
remember  that  human  nature,  left  to  itself,  in  its  native 
spontaneity,  is  a  barren  wilderness  that  yields  but  tares 
and  thorns,  and  cannot  be  made  to  bring  forth  better 
fruits  save  with  the  sweat  of  our  brow,  and  the  hard 
labour  of  the  spirit: 

"  That  life  is  not  as  idle  ore, 

But  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 

And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears, 

And  dipt  in  baths  of  hissing  tears, 
And  batter'd  with  the  shocks  of  doom 

To  shape  and  use.    Arise  and  fly 
The  reeling  Faun,  the  sensual  feast ; 
Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast, 

And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die." 1 


Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cviii. 


232  The  Moral  Ideal 

Or,  as   another  poet  has  finely  expressed  the  contrast 
between  nature's  life  and  man's  : 

"With  aching  hands  and  bleeding  feet 
We  dig  and  heap,  lay  stone  on  stone  ; 
We  bear  the  burden  and  the  heat 
Of  the  long  day,  and  wish  'twere  done. 

Not  till  the  hours  of  light  return, 

All  we  have  built  do  we  discern. 

Then,  when  the  clouds  are  off  the  soul, 

When  thou  dost  bask  in  Nature's  eye, 

Ask,  how  she  viewed  thy  self-control, 

Thy  struggling,  task'd  morality — 

Nature,  whose  free,  light,  cheerful  air, 
Oft  made  thee,  in  thy  gloom,  despair. 

And  she,  whose  censure  thou  dost  dread, 

Whose  eye  thou  wast  afraid  to  seek, 

See,  on  her  face  a  glow  is  spread, 

A  strong  emotion  on  her  cheek ! 

'Ah,  child  !'  she  cries,  '  that  strife  divine, 
Whence  was  it,  for  it  is  not  mine ? '" 1 

Yet  nature  has  her  rights ;  the  moral  person  is  to  the 
end  an  individual,  or  subject  of  sensibility.  Nature  is  to 
be  disciplined,  not  annihilated.  And  if  nature  has  to  be 
moralised,  it  is  not  in  itself  immoral;  it  does  not  even 
necessarily  conflict  with  morality.  It  is  only  because  it 
is  part  of  a  higher  nature  in  us  that  it  is  not  itself 
the  guide.  The  lower  nature  is  really  the  '  footstool  of 
the  higher.'  It  is  in  its  rebellion  against  the  law  of 
the  higher  nature  that  evil  consists ;  evil  is,  as  Plato 
taught,  a  rebellion  and  insurrection  of  the  lower  and  sub- 
ject element  against  the  higher  and  sovereign  part  of  the 
soul.  It  is  when  the  citadel  of  our  nature  capitulates  to 
the  enemy  within  the  city  of  Mansoul,  that  evil  is  done ; 
it  is  when  reason  becomes  the  slave  of  passion,  that  we 
lose  our  crown,  and  sell  our  birthright.  The  romanti- 
cists, the  realists,  the  sentimentalists  of  literature  have, 

1  Matthew  Arnold,  Poems :  "  Morality." 


Eudcemonism  233 

as  George  Meredith  says,  got  hold  of  a  half-truth, — "  the 
melodists  upon  life  and  the  world  who  set  a  sensual 
world  in  motion  and  fiddle  harmonics  on  the  strings  of 
sensualism,  to  the  delight  of  a  world  gaping  for  marvels 
of  musical  execution  rather  than  for  music."  Some  one 
has  said  of  M.  Zola,  that  he  "  sees  in  humanity  la  Mte 
humaine.  He  sees  the  beast  in  all  its  transformations, 
but  he  sees  only  the  beast."  For  the  music  and  deep 
harmony  of  human  life  has  its  keynote  in  reason,  and, 
like  all  other  harmonies,  is  reached  through  discord. 
"  Our  world  is  all  but  a  sensational  world  at  present, 
in  maternal  travail  of  a  soberer,  a  braver,  a  brighter- 
eyed.  .  .  .  Peruse  your  realists — really  your  castigators 
for  not  having  yet  embraced  philosophy.  As  she  grows 
in  the  flesh,  when  discreetly  tended,  nature  is  unimpeach- 
able, flower-like,  yet  not  too  decoratively  a  flower ;  you 
must  have  her  with  the  stem,  the  thorns,  the  roots,  and 
the  fat  bedding  of  roses."  The  secret  of  true  human 
living,  the  heart  of  ethical  truth,  lies  in  "  the  right  use 
of  the  senses,  reality's  infinite  sweetness."  There  is  in 
every  one  of  us  a  Caliban  nature, "  an  unfailing  aboriginal 
democratic  old  monster,  that  waits  to  pull  us  down ;  cer- 
tainly the  branch,  possibly  the  tree ;  and  for  the  welfare 
of  life  we  fall.  .  .  .  You  must  turn  on  yourself,  resolute- 
ly track  and  seize  that  burrower,  and  scrub  and  cleanse 
him." 1  Civilisation  contributes  to  the  cleansing  process ; 
it  at  least  keeps  the  monster  well  out  of  sight.  But 
nature  must  be  moralised,  and  the  process  of  moralisation 
is  one  of  sore  pain  and  travail.  It  may  mean  the  cutting 
off  of  a  right  hand  and  the  plucking  out  of  a  right  eye, 
that  so  we  may  enter,  even  halt  and  maimed,  into  the 
kingdom  of  the  good.  It  means  the  passing  through  the 
fiery  furnace,  by  which  nature  is  purified  of  dross  and 
"hardened  into  the  pure  ore."  It  means,  as  Plato  al- 
ready said,  "  conversion,"  or  "  the  turning  round  of  the 
eye  of  the  soul,  and  with  it  the  whole  soul,  to  the  good." 

1  Diana  of  the  Crossways,  ch.  i. 


234  The  Moral  Ideal 

Man's  life  is  like  that  of  the  Phoenix,  that  rises  out  of 
its  own  ashes ;  if  he  would  live  the  true  human  life,  he 
must  be  '  born  again  from  above.'  Into  every  element 
of  natural  impulse  and  desire  must  be  breathed  the  new 
life  of  the  rational  spirit. 

"  The  petals  of  to-day, 
To-morrow  fallen  away, 
Shall  something  leave  instead, 
To  live  when  they  are  dead ; 
When  you,  ye  vague  desires, 
Have  vanished ; 

A  something  to  survive, 
Of  you  though  it  derive 
Apparent  earthly  birth, 
But  of  far  other  worth 
Than  you,  ye  vague  desires, 
Than  you." 1 

The  same  lesson,  that  "  from  flesh  unto  spirit  man  grows," 
is  finely  enforced  by  Matthew  Arnold : 

"  Know,  man  hath  all  which  Nature  hath,  but  more, 
And  in  that  more  lie  all  his  hopes  of  good. 
Man  must  begin,  know  this,  where  Nature  ends ; 
Nature  and  man  can  never  be  fast  friends. 
Fool,  if  thou  canst  not  pass  her,  rest  her  slave  ! " 

Perhaps  one  of  the  completest  descriptions  of  the 
ethical  life,  at  least  in  English  literature,  is  that  which 
Browning  has  given  us  in  his  famous  Eabbi  Ben  Ezra. 
In  this  poem,  it  will  be  remembered,  age  is  represented  as 
taking  account  of  the  total  gain  and  loss  of  life,  reckoning 
up  its  final  significance  under  the  illumination  of 

"The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made." 

And  the  element  of  value  is  found  just  in  that  doubt 
and  strife,  that  failure  and  pain,  which  had  been  such 
mysteries  to  youth,  with  its  eager  thirst  for  pleasure  and 
the  satisfaction  of  the  moment : 

1  A.  H.  Clough,  Poems :  "  Sehnsucht." 


Eudcemonism  235 

"  Rather  I  prize  the  doubt 

Low  kinds  exist  without, 

Finished  and  finite  clods,  untroubled  by  a  spark. 

Poor  vaunt  of  life  indeed, 

Were  man  but  formed  to  feed 

On  joy,  to  solely  seek  and  find  and  feast ; 

Such  feasting  ended,  then 

As  sure  an  end  to  men  ; 

Irks  care  the  crop-full  bird  ?    Frets  doubt  the  maw- 
crammed  beast  1 

Then  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 

Each  sting  that  bids  not  sit  nor  stand  but  go  1 

Be  our  joys  three-fourths  pain  ! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain  ; 

Learn,  nor  account  the  pang ;  dare,  never  grudge  the 
throe ! " 

And  as,  in  the  quiet  evening  light,  he  meditates  upon 
the  meaning  of  that  life  whose  day  is  now  far  spent, 
its  real  worth  breaks  in  clear  and  definite  outline  upon 
his  vision : 

"  He  fixed  thee  'mid  this  dance 
Of  plastic  circumstance, 

This  Present,  thou,  forsooth,  wouldst  fain  arrest : 
Machinery  just  meant 
To  give  thy  soul  its  bent, 
Try  thee,  and  turn  thee  forth,  sufficiently  impressed." 


LITERATURE. 

Aristotle,  Nicomachean  Ethics,  bks.  i.  -iii.  ch.  viii. ;  bk.  x. 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  iii. 

Hegel,  Philosophy  of  Right  (Eng.  trans,  by  Dyde). 

J.  M.  Sterrett,  The  Ethics  of  Hegel. 

S.  S.  Laurie,  Ethica,  or  The  Ethics  of  Reason. 

F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  esp.  Essays  ii.,  v.,  vi.,  vii. 

J.  Dewey,  Study  of  Ethics ;  Outlines  of  Ethics,  pp.  95-138, 152-158. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  esp.  bk.  ii.  ch.  v.  §§  10-15  (3rd  ed.) 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  esp.  bks.  iv.  and  v. 

C.  F.  D'Arcy,  A  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  ii. 


PART    II 

THE     MORAL     LIFE 


THE  MOEAL  LIFE. 


Virtues  and  duties.  The  unity  of  the  moral  life. — 
The  chief  forms  into  which  the  good  life  differentiates 
itself  are  called  by  the  ancients  the  cardinal  virtues,  by 
the  moderns  the  table  of  duties.  These  two  terms, '  virtue ' 
and  '  duty,'  are  two  modes  of  describing  the  same  thing ; 
the  former  emphasises  the  inner  character  and  its  funda- 
mental excellences,  the  latter  the  expression  of  character 
in  conduct  and  the  primary  forms  of  that  expression. 
Whether  we  look  at  the  moral  life  from  the  standpoint 
of  character  or  of  conduct,  we  find  it  necessary  to  in- 
terpret it  as  an  indissoluble  unity.  One  cannot  have 
any  of  the  virtues  without  possessing  in  that  measure 
all  the  rest,  one  cannot  fulfil  any  duty  without  fulfil- 
ling in  that  measure  all  the  other  duties.  The  several 
virtues  and  duties  are  simply  the  several  aspects  of  the 
good  life,  the  various  colours  into  which  the  perfect  spec- 
trum of  character  or  conduct  can  be  analysed ;  or,  afc  the 
most,  they  are  the  several  stages  in  the  development 
of  character  and  conduct,  and  each  leads  inevitably  be- 
yond itself  to  the  next  as  the  goal  of  its  own  perfection. 
Two  main  aspects  of  the  moral  life  may  be  emphasised — 
the  individual  and  the  social ;  but  the  unity  of  these  is 
apparent  when  we  remember  that  both  may  be  subsumed 
under  the  common  term  '  personal.'  The  individual  can- 
not be  true  to  his  own  personality  without  being  true  to 


240  The  Moral  Life 

the  personality  of  all  whom  his  conduct  in  any  way  affects. 
To  stand  in  the  right  relation  to  myself  is  to  stand  in 
the  right  relation  to  my  fellows ;  to  realise  my  own 
true  self  is  to  help  all  others  to  the  same  self-realisation. 
Again,  we  may  divide  the  virtues  and  the  corresponding 
duties  into  negative  and  positive  groups.  From  the  stand- 
point of  the  individual,  the  moral  life  may  be  regarded  as 
a  life  at  once  of  self -discipline  and  of  self-development, 
resulting  in  the  virtues  of  temperance  and  of  culture. 
But  the  perfectly  temperate  or  self-disciplined  man  would 
be  also  the  man  of  perfect  culture  or  self -development. 
Similarly,  from  the  standpoint  of  society,  we  may  distin- 
guish the  negative  aspect  of  morality  from  the  positive — 
the  duty  of  freedom  or  non-interference  with  the  self- 
realisation  of  others,  with  the  corresponding  virtue  of 
justice,  from  the  duty  of  fraternity  or  the  positive  help- 
ing of  others  in  their  efforts  after  their  own  perfection, 
with  the  corresponding  virtue  of  benevolence.  Here 
again  it  is  obvious  that  we  have  only  two  aspects  of 
a  single  life,  that  justice  imperceptibly  glides  into  be- 
nevolence, freedom  into  fraternity;  that  the  one  is  the 
seed,  the  other  the  full-blown  flower,  of  the  same  ethical 
quality.  Without  justice  there  can  be  no  true  benevo- 
lence, and  justice  made  perfect  is  already  benevolence  in 
germ. 


241 


CHAPTEE   I. 

THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

I. —  Temperance,  or  Self -discipline. 

1.  Its  fundamental  importance. — This  is  the  first 
necessity  of  the  moral  life ;  it  is  essential  to  the  con- 
stitution of  virtue.  The  very  essence  of  morality  is, 
we  have  seen,  the  establishment  of  the  order  of  reason 
in  the  chaos  of  natural  impulse ;  and  the  reign  of  rea- 
son means  the  subjection  and  obedience  of  sensibility. 
Character  is  nature  disciplined.  The  mastery  of  natural 
impulse  by  reason,  in  such  wise  that  the  original  stream 
of  tendency  may  become  the  dynamic  of  rational  purpose  ; 
the  conversion  of  the  original  irrational  energy  into  an 
energy  of  reason  itself ;  the  transmutation  of  impulse 
into  character, — this  may  be  said  to  be  the  essential 
business  of  the  moral  life  from  first  to  last.  Out  of 
our  natural  individuality  we  have  each  to  form  a  moral 
personality.  The  original  or  natural  self  is  non-moral, 
and  must  be  moralised.  To  be  moralised,  it  must  be 
disciplined,  regulated,  subdued ;  for  ©nly  so  can  it  be 
organised  into  the  structure  of  a  rational  life.  If  the 
sphere  of  sensibility  is  to  be  finally  annexed  by  reason, 
it  must  first  be  conquered ;  and  this  conquest  of  the  self 
of  natural  sensibility  by  the  rational  self  is  temperance. 
For  the  heedless,  partial,  natural  self  is  apt  to  rebel  against 
the  regulation  of  reason,  it  wants  to  rule ;  and  the  right 

Q 


242  The  Moral  Life 

of  reason  has  to  become  the  might  of  a  rationalised  sen- 
sibility. The  interest  of  the  total  self,  which  reason  alone 
can  discover,  has  to  be  asserted  and  maintained  against 
the  interest  of  the  partial,  fleeting,  but  clamant  self 
of  mere  sensibility.  This  general  purpose  or  end,  chosen 
deliberately  and  reflectively,  must  be  resolutely  main- 
tained against  the  particular,  momentary  or  habitual, 
impulsive  tendencies  which  would  swamp  it  in  the  flood- 
tide  of  their  power,  and,  if  unchecked,  would  make  us 
act  as  if  the  purpose  did  not  exist,  and  had  not  been 
chosen.  Intemperance  is  disintegration,  disorganisation ; 
it  is  the  rule  of  unorganised  or  disorganised  sensibility. 
Its  watchword  is  self -gratification  or  self-indulgence. 
The  temperate  life,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  whole  in  its 
every  part;  if  you  take  a  section  of  it  at  any  point, 
you  discover  in  it  the  structure  of  the  whole,  the  partial 
expression  and  realisation  of  its  total  purpose.  All  its 
energies  are  controlled  from  a  common  centre,  they  are 
the  different  manifestations  of  one  great  energy  of  good- 
ness. Such  a  life  is  consistent  and  harmonious  with 
itself ;  it  has  the  calm  strength  of  a  resolute  and  even 
purpose.  But  this  harmony  and  strength  are  the  reward 
of  a  resolute  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice. 

No  natural  impulse  is  in  itself  evil,  no  element  of 
sensibility  is,  as  such,  immoral.  Evil  or  immorality 
arises  only  when  the  government  of  conduct  is  given 
to  un-moralised  sensibility.  Sensibility  needs  the  edu- 
cation of  reason,  before  it  is  capable  of  government ;  it 
must  itself  be  governed,  before  it  is  fitted  to  govern.  Not 
that  there  may  not  be  a  certain  system  in  a  life  controlled 
by  uneducated  sensibility.  The  life  of  tjie  miser  or  of 
the  man  who  is  ambitious  for  mere  power  is,  so  far,  a 
systematic  and  coherent  life,  though  it  is  under  the 
dominion  of  a  single  uncontrolled  passion.  But  the 
system  of  such  a  life,  we  recognise  at  once,  is  not  the 
true  system ;  even  the  man  himself  would  hardly  claim 
that  it  is,  and  his  larger  and  better  nature  will  prob- 


The  Individual  Life  243 

ably  assert  itself  occasionally,  and  break  up  the  little 
system  of  his  short-sighted  purpose.  In  such  a  life 
the  part  has  claimed  to  be  the  whole ;  and  the  result 
is  necessarily  partial,  abstract,  contradictory.  The  true 
whole  is  the  unity  of  all  the  parts ;  and  that  it  may  be 
constituted,  every  selfish  impulse  must  submit  to  the 
control  of  the  rational  self,  which  alone  can  estimate  the 
relative  and  permanent  value  of  each.  Most  commonly, 
the  absence  of  such  true  system  and  completeness  is  re- 
vealed in  the  obviously  and  painfully  self- contradictory, 
fragmentary,  and  inconsistent  character  of  the  intem- 
perate life,  in  its  too  evident  want  of  unity.  The  main 
stream  of  its  purpose  is  drained  off  into  side-currents  and 
eddies,  and  many  a  time  is  checked  and  turned  by  an 
undercurrent  running  in  the  opposite  direction. 

2.  Its  negative  aspect.  —  The  virtue  of  temperance 
or  the  duty  of  self-discipline  has  two  aspects,  a  negative 
and  a  positive.  First,  negatively,  it  is  the  subjection  of 
all  impulse  to  the  rule  of  rational  choice,  freedom  from 
the  domination  of  any  single  tendency  of  our  nature, 
the  setting  to  each  its  measure  and  limit  by  making 
it  an  element  in  a  coherent  and  systematic  rational  life. 
In  general,  however,  one  particular  impulse  or  set  of  im- 
pulses represents  the  principle  of  disintegration  in  the  in- 
dividual ;  the  forces  of  the  rebel  nature  are  concentrated 
at  some  one  point  or  at  a  few  points.  This  impulse 
represents  evil  for  the  man ;  at  this  point  the  battle 
must  be  fought,  here  it  must  be  lost  or  won.  The  struggle 
is  not  with  evil  in  general,  or  with  nature  in  the  abstract ; 
it  is  with  this  particular  form  of  evil,  it  is  with  our  own 
nature,  or  '  besetting  sin.'  The  struggle  of  the  drunkard 
is  with  the  appetite  for  drink ;  he  must  master  this 
appetite,  or  it  will  master  him.  The  struggle  of  the 
miser  is  with  cupidity,  of  the  lazy  and  luxurious  with 
the  love  of  ease.  In  other  words,  the  task  is  always  one 
of  self-conquest,  and  as  the  natural  self  of  eacli  is  different 


244  The  Moral  Life 

from  that  of  his  neighbour,  the  moral  task  is  always  very 
concrete  and  individual.  What  is  temperance  for  one  is 
intemperance  for  another ;  the  mean  for  one  is  for  another 
excess ;  where  one  walks  in  perfect  safety,  another  may 
not  trust  himself  to  walk  at  all. 

Here  we  see  the  relative  truth  of  asceticism.  Self- 
discipline  is,  for  each,  self-denial  or  self-sacrifice.  The 
individuality  must  be  subdued  to  the  rational  personality, 
and  the  perfect  subjection  of  individuality  may,  and  often 
does,  mean  the  absolute  denial,  at  some  point,  of  its  right 
to  live.  If  a  natural  impulse  claims  us  as  exclusively  its 
own,  if  it  enslaves  us,  and  its  indulgence  at  all  means  for 
us  its  immoderate  indulgence — if,  unless  it  is  kept  below 
its  normal  level,  it  will  inevitably  rise  above  it  —  the 
necessity  is  laid  upon  us  to  deny  that  impulse,  to  starve 
it,  and,  it  may  be,  even  to  kill  it  outright.  Better  to 
enter  into  the  moral  life  halt  and  maimed,  if  we  cannot 
enter  whole  and  sound,  than  not  to  enter  at  all.  It  may 
be  profitable  for  us  that  one  of  our  members  perish,  that 
some  particular  passion  or  appetite  be  denied  indulgence 
altogether,  because  moderate  indulgence  of  it  is  for  us 
impossible.  Thus,  while  temperance  is  moderation,  not 
abstinence,  abstinence  may  be  to  the  individual  the  only 
means  to  moderation;  and  the  ascetic  principle  of  keeping 
the  body  under,  lest  it  rebel  against  the  rule  of  reason,  is 
a  safe  ethical  maxim  for  the  average  man.  "  Since  it  is 
hard  to  hit  the  mean,  we  must  '  tack  as  we  cannot  run,' 
to  use  the  sailors'  phrase,  and  choose  the  least  of  two 
evils.  .  .  .  and  we  must  consider,  each  for  himself, 
what  we  are  most  prone  to — for  different  natures  are 
inclined  to  different  things.  .  .  .  And  then  we  must 
bend  ourselves  in  the  opposite  direction ;  for  by  keep- 
ing well  away  from  error,  we  shall  fall  into  the  middle 
course,  as  we  straighten  a  bent  stick  by  bending  it  in  the 
contrary  direction."  * 

The  concrete  and  individual  character  of  self-discipline 

1  Aristotle,  Nic.  Eth.,  ii.  9  (4,  5). 


The  Individual  Life  245 

illustrates  the  importance,  and  even  the  necessity,  of  self- 
knowledge.  A  man  is  his  own  worst  enemy  ;  no  other  can 
do  him  such  dire  injury  as  that  which  he  can  inflict  upon 
himself.  If  he  would  discover  the  enemy  in  his  ambush, 
therefore,  he  must  carefully  explore  and  spy  out  the 
secret  places  of  his  own  nature.  He  must  discover  his 
peculiar  bias,  and  watch  keenly  its  growing  or  decreasing 
strength.  He  must  often  recollect  himself,  and  reckon 
up  the  gain  and  loss,  the  victory  and  defeat,  in  this  inner 
combat  with  himself.  And  he  must  act  in  the  light  of 
this  knowledge,  with  all  the  prudence  of  a  general  who 
calculates  nicely  the  forces  of  the  enemy  and  compares 
their  numbers  with  his  own. 

3.  Relation  of  its  negative  to  its  positive  aspect. 
— This  negative  side  of  self-discipline,  this  work  of  mere 
subjection  of  natural  sensibility,  is,  we  all  know,  a  much 
larger  part  of  some  lives  than  of  others.  In  some  the 
sensibility  seems  so  to  lend  itself  from  the  first  to  the 
wise  control  of  reason  that  there  is  little  consciousness  of 
struggle  or  control  at  all.  Such  a  moral  career  seems  a 
pretty  even  tenor  of  goodness ;  its  fair  Elysian  fields  are 
never  stained  with  the  blood  of  battle,  its  quiet  peace  is 
hardly  broken  with  the  noise  of  tumult  or  rebellion. 
Such  well  -  tempered  natures  have  the  more  energy  to 
spare  for  the  tasks  of  positive  virtue ;  and  to  whom 
much  is  given,  of  them  is  much  required.  Others  wage 
a  bitter  and  life-long  struggle  against  some  natural  tend- 
ency which,  with  their  utmost  efforts,  they  can  only  keep 
in  subjection ;  these  have  little  energy  left  for  positive 
virtue.  In  them,  however,  to  whom  so  little  is  given, 
a  little  of  positive  accomplishment  may  be  much ;  for 
moral  accomplishment  is  achieved  in  the  sphere  of  char- 
acter, and  its  significance  is  necessarily  relative  and 
individual. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  forgotten  that  positive  and  self-for- 
getting activity,  the  devotion  of  our  entire  energy  to 


246  The  Moral  Life 

some  disinterested  end,  is  one  of  the  best  means  of  deliver- 
ance from  the  slavery  of  individual  impulse.  The  true 
self-discipline  is  inevitably  positive  as  well  as  negative. 
The  most  perfect  mastery  of  impulse  comes  with  the 
guidance  of  all  its  energy  into  the  path  of  our  positive 
life-purpose.  Temperance  is  not  mere  negation  or  anni- 
hilation of  impulse,  it  is  its  co-ordination  and  control ; 
and  the  characteristic  impulsive  energy  of  the  individual 
ought  to  be  utilised  in  the  interest  of  the  total  purpose 
of  the  life.  The  only  final  subjugation  of  sensibility 
comes  with  its  transmutation  into  the  enthusiasm  of  some 
great  end.  Sensibility  has  then  become  organic  to  reason, 
it  is  then  the  dynamic  of  the  rational  life  ;  and  the  danger 
of  insurrection  has  almost  disappeared.  It  is  from  idle 
impulse  that  there  is  danger ;  impulse  which  has  its  work 
assigned  to  it  by  reason  soon  becomes  reason's  willing 
servant.  The  strongest  natures  are  always  natures  of 
strong  impulse,  mastered  and  subdued  to  the  unity  of  a 
purpose  which  has  possessed  their  entire  being.  The 
individuality  has  all  passed  into  the  personality ;  the  fire 
of  a  consuming  purpose  has  purified  the  dull  ore  of  all 
their  natural  sensibilities.  The  search  for  truth  is  the 
passion  of  a  Socrates  and  a  Newton ;  all  the  energy  of 
a  Luther's  nature  goes  into  the  task  of  reformation.  Not 
till  the  depths  of  the  moral  being  are  thus  stirred,  and 
all  the  energy  of  its  native  passion  captivated  by  rational 
purpose,  is  the  work  of  self-discipline  made  perfect. 

4.  Its  positive  aspect. — Thus  we  have  reached  the 
second  and  positive  aspect  of  temperance  —  namely, 
concentration  or  unity  of  purpose,  self-limitation.  The 
natural  impulsive  energy  must  be  guided  along  a  single 
path ;  its  original  tendency  to  diffusion  must  be  checked. 
Diffusion  means  waste,  economy  of  power  implies  limi- 
tation and  definiteness  of  direction.  The  strong  and 
effective  man  is  always  the  man  of  one  idea,  of  one 
book ;  the  specialist,  whether  in  the  intellectual  or  in 


The  Individual  Life  247 

other  activities ;  the  man  who  has  one  consuming  inter- 
est in  life,  a  master-interest  and  enthusiasm  which  has 
subdued  all  others  to  itself.  Unity,  simplicity,  single- 
ness of  purpose — the  correlation  and  integration  of  all 
the  tendencies  of  the  individual  nature — this  is  the 
mark  of  a  perfectly  temperate,  a  thoroughly  disciplined 
life.  The  forces  of  the  nature  are  not  merely  checked 
and  conquered ;  they  are  engaged  in  the  service  of  an 
erd  which  can  utilise  them  all,  and  whose  service  is 
perfect  freedom  from  the  bondage  of  mere  unregulated 
impulse.  Here  again  we  see  the  need  of  self-knowledge : 
we  need  to  know  the  positive,  as  well  as  the  negative, 
significance  of  our  individuality.  And  such  a  knowledge 
of  what  we  can  do  is  at  the  same  time  a  knowledge  of 
what  we  cannot  do :  a  knowledge  of  our  individual 
capacity  is  at  the  same  time  a  knowledge  of  our  in- 
dividual limitation. 


II. — Culture,  or  Self-development. 

5.  Its  fundamental  importance. — The  fundamental 
'  importance  of  a  man  to  himself '  has  been  made  the 
corner-stone  of  their  theory  of  life  by  all  the  great 
moralists,  as  it  has  been  made  the  recurring  note  in  the 
preaching  of  all  the  great  moral  teachers.  Socrates 
insists,  hardly  less  strenuously  than  Jesus,  upon  the 
supreme  value  of  the  individual  soul,  and  the  prime 
duty  of  caring  for  it.  It  was  Christianity,  however, 
that  first  brought  home  to  the  general  consciousness  of 
mankind  the  idea  of  the  salvation  of  the  self,  not  from 
punishment,  but  from  sin ;  the  conviction  that  the  true 
good  is  to  be  found  in  inner  excellence  of  character; 
the  thought  of  the  treasure  which  is  laid  up  where 
neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  corrupt,  in  the  inner  chambers 
of  the  spiritual  being.  What  a  hold  this  idea  took  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  how  it  produced  the  monastic  life, 
with  its  preoccupation  with  the  anatomy  of  spiritual 


248  The  Moral  Life 

states,  its  morbid  self-conscious  pietism,  we  all  know. 
We  are  also  familiar  with  the  narrower  and  more  super- 
ficial self-consciousness  of  the  man  of  '  culture '  and  the 
'  aesthete/  as  well  as  with  the  equally  foolish  self-concern 
of  the  pedant  who  would  fain  be  a  scholar.  These  are 
instances  of  the  obvious  over-development  of  self-con- 
sciousness and  self -concern.  Better  far  to  forget  our- 
selves than  to  be  thus  ever  mindful ;  better  to  be  cauglit 
nodding,  like  Homer  himself,  than  to  be  always  thus  pain- 
fully on  the  alert.  There  is  an  unconscious  self-develop- 
ment which  is  often  the  best.  But  these  are  only 
exaggerations  of  the  essential  and  fundamental  virtue, 
the  common  root  of  all  the  rest.  We  must  never  really 
forget,  in  all  the  various  business  of  life,  that  man's 
'  proper  business '  is  with  himself,  that  his  grand  concern 
is  the  culture  of  his  own  nature,  the  development  of  his 
best  and  total  self.  And  since  all  so-called  '  business ' 
is,  in  this  sense,  more  or  less  distracting,  we  have  need 
of  leisure  from  its  care  and  trouble  for  self-recollection, 
of  leisure  to  be  with  ourselves,  to  be  ourselves.  For 
we  are  not  to  perfect  ourselves  merely  as  instruments 
for  the  production  of  results,  however  good.  A  man's 
true  work  is  that  '  activity  of  the  soul '  (i/'vx'JC  tvtpytia) 
which  is  its  own  sufficient  end,  the  actualisation  and 
development  of  the  man's  true  '  soul '  or  self.  The 
utilitarian  estimate  of  education  is  essentially  super- 
ficial; it  is  the  estimate  of  the  Philistine  who  asks 
always  for  the  '  practical '  value  of  culture,  and  thereby 
shows  that  he  does  not  know  what  culture  is.  The  true 
'  practice '  of  a  human  being  is  not  that  in  which  he 
discharges  best  a  task  which  has  no  essential  relation  to 
himself ;  it  is  that  which  calls  forth  and  develops  all  his 
human  powers,  the  man  in  the  man. 

6.  Meaning  of  culture. — I  have  said  that  it  is  the 
total  self  that  is  to  be  developed, — the  intellectual,  the 
emotional,  and  the  active  or  volitional  elements,  each  in 


The  Individual  Life  249 

its  perfection,  and  all  in  the  harmony  of  a  complete  and 
single  life.  Culture  means  not  merely  the  cultivation  of 
the  several  capacities,  but  the  symmetrical  development 
of  all.  As,  in  the  physical  organism,  the  health  of  each 
member  depends  upon  the  health  of  the  organism  as  a 
whole,  so  the  true  development  of  any  part  of  our  nature 
implies  the  concurrent  development  of  all  the  other  parts. 
The  defective  character  of  the  intellectual  man,  whose 
emotional  nature  is  atrophied  and  whom  undue  reflection 
has  wellnigh  incapacitated  for  practical  activity ;  of  the 
man  of  feeling,  who  has  forgotten  how  to  think  or  act ; 
of  the  practical  man,  who  has  no  time  for  thought,  and 
to  whom,  perhaps,  the  emotional  life  seems  a  weakness 
or  a  luxury  which  he  cannot  afford  himself, — is  matter 
of  common  observation.  It  is  perhaps  not  so  commonly 
realised  that  true  intellectual  culture  itself  implies  the 
culture  of  the  emotions,  if  not  also  of  the  will ;  that  true 
aesthetic  culture  implies  the  culture  of  both  will  and 
intellect ;  and,  above  all,  that  the  best  activity  is  the 
outcome  of  the  largest  thought  and  the  deepest  and 
warmest  sensibility.  In  all  spheres,  the  keynote  of  true 
culture  is  symmetrical  self-development. 

7.  The  place  of  physical  culture. — The  relation  of 
physical  to  ethical  well-being  is  apt  to  be  misconceived. 
It  is  that  of  means  to  end.  Physical  well-being  is  not 
an  integral  part  of  the  ethical  end,  though  it  is  perhaps 
the  most  important  means  towards  the  realisation  of 
that  end.  Health  is  the  basis  of  the  moral  life,  it  is  no 
part  of  that  life  itself.  The  body  is  only  the  instru- 
ment or  organ  of  a  life  which  is,  in  its  essence,  spiritual. 
It  becomes  a  duty  to  care  for  the  body,  but  this  care  is 
only  part  of  our  care  for  the  soul  or  the  spiritual  self. 
My  body  is  mine,  it  is  not  /.  To  make  physical  well- 
being  an  end-in-itself,  is  to  forget  that  animal  perfection 
is  an  end  unworthy  of  a  rational  being.  It  is  the  ends 
for  which  the  human  mind  can  use  the  body  that  give 


250  The  Moral  Life 

the  human  body  its  peculiar  dignity ;  and  if  man  makes 
the  mind  the  minister  of  the  body's  perfection,  he  is 
reversing  their  true  ethical  relation.  In  this  connection 
Matthew  Arnold  has  justly  criticised  the  popular  estimate 
of  physical  health  as  an  end-in-itself ; x  it  is  that  for  the 
mere  animal,  but  it  cannot  properly  be  that  for  man. 
'  Physical  culture '  is  not  an  integral  part  of  '  ethical 
culture.' 

As  a  means  towards  the  attainment  of  the  ethical  end, 
or  as  the  basis  of  the  moral  life,  the  importance  of  physical 
well-being  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  Self-preservation 
and  self-development  are,  in  this  sense,  always  primarily 
the  preservation  and  development  of  the  physical  life. 
We  must  live,  in  order  to  live  well ;  and  our  power  of 
realising  our  moral  purposes  will  be  largely  determined 
by  our  physical  health.  The  ethical  value  of  life,  both  in 
its  length  and  in  its  breadth,  in  the  duration  and  in  the 
wealth  of  its  activities,  is  to  a  considerable  extent  within 
our  own  power,  being  determined  by  our  care  or  neglect 
of  the  body.  To  despise  the  body,  or  to  seek  to  escape 
from  it,  as  the  ascetic  does,  is  as  wrong  as  it  is  futile. 
The  body  is  the  main  condition  of  the  moral  life,  its  very 
element  and  atmosphere ;  and  the  athletic  exaggeration 
of  the  importance  of  the  body,  like  the  estimate  of  clean- 
liness as  not  secondary  to  godliness,  is  probably,  in  the 
main,  a  not  unnatural  reaction  from  the  ascetic  extreme 
of  contempt  and  neglect  fostered  by  Puritan  tradition. 
Above  all,  it  is  obvious  that,  if  care  for  the  body  is  an 
important  although  an  indirect  duty,  the  destruction  of 
the  physical  life,  or  suicide,  is  an  exceeding  great  sin. 
Our  moral  life  being  physically  conditioned,  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  body  is  an  indirect  attack  upon  that  life 
itself.  Suicide,  being  self-destruction,  so  far  as  that  is 
possible  to  us,  must  always  contradict  the  fundamental 
ethical  principle  of  self-development. 

Health  is  only  a  part  of  that  individual  good  which  is, 
1  See  Culture  und  Anarchy,  p.  21. 


The  Individual  Life  251 

as  such,  subordinate  to  personal  good,  and  has  only  an 
instrumental  value.  Like  money,  and  position,  social  or 
official,  it  is  part  of  our  moral  opportunity.  But  we 
have  seen  that  the  prudential  life,  whose  concern  is  with 
the  opportunity  rather  than  with  the  exercise  of  virtue, 
does  not  coexist  alongside  the  life  of  virtue,  but  is 
organic  to  that  life.  It  is  not  the  possession  or  non- 
possession  of  these  things,  but  the  use  I  make  of  them, 
that  is  of  ethical  significance.  It  would  perhaps  be 
helpful  to  clear  ethical  thinking  to  make  the  term 
'  prudence  '  cover  the  instrumental  or  the  '  occasional ' — 
those  aspects  of  human  life  which,  like  physical  health, 
pecuniary  affairs,  worldly  position,  or  office,  have  in  them- 
selves no  moral  significance,  but  acquire  such  a  signifi- 
cance, through  their  being  the  material  basis  of  the 
moral  life. 

8.  The  individual  nature  of  self -development. — 
We  have  seen  that  self- development  means  the  develop- 
ment of  individuality  into  personality ;  that  the  person  is 
always  an  individual.  It  is,  therefore,  essential  to  true 
self-development  that  the  individuality  be  conserved,  not 
destroyed.  Many  factors  of  our  modern  civilisation  tend 
to  substitute  monotonous  and  dead  uniformity  for  the 
living  and  interesting  diversity  of  individual  nature. 
Specialisation  is  apt  to  dwarf  the  individuality ;  political 
and  other  forms  of  social  organisation  tend  in  the  same 
direction.  We  are  much  more  apt  than  our  forefathers 
to  imitate  others,  and  much  less  willing  to  be  ourselves. 
Yet  it  is  clear  that  vocation  is  determined  chiefly  by 
individual  aptitude,  though  modified  by  the  pressure  of 
circumstances.  The  true  career  for  a  man  is  that  which 
will  most  fully  realise  his  individuality.  Fortunate  in- 
deed is  he  to  whom  a  thorough  understanding  of  his  own 
nature  and  an  appropriate  course  of  circumstances  open 
up  the  path  of  such  a  career.  With  too  many  their 
so-called  '  career '  is  a  mere  routine,  a  business  for  their 


252  The  Moral  Life 

hands  which  leaves  their  deeper  nature  idle  and  unem- 
ployed, longing  for  a  life  more  satisfying  than  that  offered 
by  the  activities  which  consume  its  weary  days,  finding 
something  of  that  true  life,  it  may  be,  elsewhere,  in 
some  pursuit  which  has  no  relation  to  the  daily  avoca- 
tion. There  is  a  pathos  in  some  men's  '  hobbies ' ;  they 
indicate  that  the  soul  is  not  dead  but  sleeping,  and 
needs  but  the  touch  of  an  understanding  sympathy  to 
rouse  it  from  its  sleep.  For  the  only  true  life  is  ^u\^c 
Ivtpytia,  activity  of  the  soul  or  self.  Happiest  is  he  who 
can  put  his  whole  soul,  all  the  energies  of  his  spirit,  into 
each  day's  work.  His  work,  even  as  work,  as  sheer  pro- 
duct, will  have  a  different  value :  it  will  be  honest  work, 
the  best  work.  It  seems  as  if  brute  matter  itself  took 
the  impress  of  the  soul  that  moulds  it ;  we  feel,  for  ex- 
ample, that  Carlyle's  appreciation  of  his  father's  masonry 
is  essentially  a  true  appreciation.1  And  as  the  means  of 
spiritual  expression  and  expansion,  the  difference  between 
nominal  and  real  work  is  incalculable.  How  many  im- 
prisoned, unexpressed,  unfulfilled  souls  behind  the  bleared, 
indifferent  faces  of  the  world's  workers  !  For  in  every 
man  there  is  a  soul,  a  self,  unique  and  interesting,  wait- 
ing for  its  development;  and  sometimes,  even  from  the 
deadest  man,  in  the  home  among  his  own  who  understand 
him,  or  touched  to  life  by  some  sign  of  brotherly  interest 
in  another,  the  soul  that  had  slept  so  long  will  suddenly 
leap  forth  and  surprise  you. 

The  true  doing  is  that  doing  which  is  also  a  being,  and 
the  medium  of  a  better  and  fuller  being,  of  a  higher  and 
more  perfect  self -development.  But  such  doing  is  as 
unique  as  such  being ;  the  measure  of  it  is  found  in  the 
individuality  of  the  worker.  Each  man,  like  each  planet, 

1  "  Nothing  that  he  undertook  but  he  did  it  faithfully,  and  like  a  true 
man.  I  shall  look  on  the  houses  he  built  with  a  certain  proud  interest. 
They  stand  firm  and  sound  to  the  heart  all  over  this  little  district.  Not 
one  that  comes  after  him  will  ever  say,  Here  was  the  finger  of  a  hollow 
eye-servant.  They  are  little  texts  for  me  of  the  gospel  of  man's  free  will." 
— Reminiscences,  pp.  5,  6. 


The  Individual  Life  253 

has  his  appointed  course,  appointed  him  by  his  nature ; 
"so  starts  the  young  life  when  it  has  coine  to  self-dis- 
covery, and  found  out  what  it  is  to  do  by  finding  out  what 
it  is."  Here,  positively  for  self-development,  as  already 
negatively  for  self-discipline,  we  see  the  need  of  self- 
knowledge.  Having  found  the  end  or  purpose  of  our  life, 
the  true  course  of  our  self-development,  and  holding  to 
this  course  steadily  through  all  the  storm  and  stress  of  pas- 
sion and  of  circumstance,  through  the  fiery  time  of  youth 
and  the  deadening  effect  of  years,  we  cannot  fail  of  the 
completeness,  fulness,  and  symmetry  of  our  appointed  life. 
Such  a  care  for  our  own  true  culture  or  self-develop- 
ment in  all  our  work  is  the  true  self-love,  and  at  the 
opposite  pole  from  selfishness.  We  ought  not  to  be  always 
trying  to  '  do  good  ' ;  the  first  requisite  for  doing  good  is 
to  be  good.  Philanthropy  or  benevolence  will  grow  out 
of  this  self-development,  as  its  flower  and  fruit.  But  self- 
culture  is  fundamental ;  and  the  unconscious  and  indirect 
philanthropy  of  faithfulness  to  ourselves  is  often  the  best 
and  furthest-reaching.  Such  self-culture  fits  us  for  service 
to  others ;  when  the  time  comes,  the  man  is  ready.  More- 
over, we  must  first  live  the  true  life  ourselves,  if  we  would 
help  others  to  live  it  too;  it  is  thus  we  get  the  needed 
understanding.  We  must  be,  ourselves,  before  we  can 
help  others  to  be.  It  is  because  God  is  all  that  we  would 
be,  that  we  say  and  feel,  "  Thou  wilt  help  us  to  be."  So  it 
is  that,  though  we  are  separate  from  one  another,  separate 
by  the  very  fact  of  personality,  each  '  rounded  to  a  separ- 
ate whole/  and  though  each  man's  single  life,  each  man's 
'own  vineyard,'  needs  constant  and  exclusive  care,  yet 
the  good  man  feels  no  cleft,  as  there  is  none,  between  the 
egoistic  and  the  altruistic  sides  of  his  life.  Egoism,  in  the 
sense  explained,  is  fundamental,  but  it  is  the  presupposition 
of  an  enlightened  and  genuine  altruism.  No  narrowness 
is  possible  for  him  who  cares  for  and  develops  his  own 
true  life ;  in  himself  he  finds  the  moral  microcosm.  The 
best  ambition  a  man  could  cherish,  both  for  himself  and 


254  The  Moral  Life 

for  his  fellows,  is  that  he  and  they  alike  may,  each  in 
himself,  and  each  in  his  own  way,  so  reflect  the  moral 
universe  that  none  may  have  cause  to  travel  beyond 
himself  to  find  the  fellowship  of  a  common  life  and  a 
common  good. 

9.  Necessity  of  transcending  our  individuality  :  the 
ideal  life. — Yet  it  is  necessary  to  transcend  our  individ- 
uality ;  personality  is  essentially  universal.  All  worthy 
and  ennobling  objects  of  human  aspiration  and  achieve- 
ment, the  service  of  our  fellows  in  any  way,  the  scientific, 
the  artistic,  and  the  religious  life, — all  alike  carry  us  be- 
yond our  own  individuality.  It  is  this  inherent  univer- 
sality that  gives  life  its  note  of  nobility.  The  personal 
life  is  never  merely  particular  and  individual ;  its  atmo- 
sphere is  always  objective  and  universal,  whether  it  be 
the  intellectual  pursuit  of  the  true,  the  artistic  pursuit 
of  the  beautiful,  or  the  religious  pursuit  of  the  good.  All 
these  pursuits  lift  the  individual  out  of  the  sphere  of  the 
particular  and  transitory  into  the  sphere  of  the  universal 
and  abiding,  out  of  the  finite  into  the  infinite  relations. 
This  is  the  touch  that  transfigures  human  life,  and  lends 
to  it  a  divine  and  absolute  significance.  For  a  full  self- 
development  it  is  needful  that  we  thus  escape  from  the 
'  cave  '  of  the  particular,  above  all,  from  the  '  cave  '  of  our 
own  individuality,  into  the  freer  atmosphere  of  the  in- 
finite and  ideal,  and  let  its  winds  blow  about  the  soul ; 
they  are  the  very  breath  of  its  higher  life. 

This  is  equally  true  of  all  three  sides  of  our  nature — 
the  intellectual,  the  aesthetic,  and  the  volitional.  How 
the  horizon  of  the  mind  lifts  with  the  apprehension  of 
truth,  how  the  pursuit  of  it  takes  a  man  out  of  himself, 
how  faithfulness  to  it  delivers  him  from  self-seeking 
and  narrow  aims,  how  the  scientific  and  the  philosophic 
life  are  essentially  disinterested,  and  how  educative  of 
the  personality  is  such  a  course  of  pure  intellectual 
activity, — on  all  this  there  is  little  need  to  insist  in  a 


The  Individual  Life  255 

scientific  age  like  the  present,  which  has  been  accused  of 
the  '  deification  of  truth.'  It  was  with  no  little  moral 
insight,  as  well  as  with  Greek  partiality  for  the  things  of 
the  mind,  that  Plato  and  Aristotle  described  the  highest 
life  of  man  as  a  purely  intellectual  activity,  the  life  of 
speculation.  That  the  contemplation  of  the  beautiful  in 
nature  and  in  human  life,  the  apprehension  of  '  the  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land/  is  also  uplifting  and 
enlarging  to  the  soul ;  that  the  companionship  of  the 
graceful  and  harmonious  makes  the  soul  itself  harmonious 
and  graceful, — the  Greeks  at  least  knew  well.  To  them 
the  true  education  was  '  musical.'  The  man  who  has 
seen  the  beautiful  is  easily  recognised,  his  face  shines 
with  the  light  of  that  divine  vision,  his  footsteps  move  to 
noble  numbers,  he  is  delicate  and  tender,  and  about  him 
there  is  a  gentleness  and  grace  which  you  miss  in  the 
hard  practical  man,  and  even  in  the  mere  intellectualist. 
The  beauty  of  the  world  has  '  passed  into  his  face.'  Least 
of  all  can  we  be  ignorant  of  the  influence  of  the  contem- 
plation of  the  ideal  good.  The  soul  that  believes  in,  and 
lives  in  communion  with,  goodness  absolute,  is  touched  to 
goodness  as  a  soul  that  sees  only  the  poverty  of  the  actual 
cannot  be.  The  moral  value  of  an  ethical  religion  is  an 
undoubted  fact,  acknowledged  by  every  one.  Nor  is  the 
essence  of  religion  mere  constraint,  its  sanction  of  good- 
ness mere  fear  of  punishment  or  hope  of  reward.  Far 
more  powerful,  though  more  subtly  exercised,  is  the  puri- 
fying influence  of  the  divine  vision  itself.  The  Hebrews 
felt  this  so  deeply  that  they  were  afraid  of  that  vision 
which  we  have  learned  to  call  '  beatific.'  "  No  man  can 
see  God's  face  and  live."  Evil  cannot  live  in  the  presence 
of  utter  holiness.  Even  among  men,  we  know  how  stern 
to  the  impure  is  the  silent  rebuke  of  purity,  how  humili- 
ating to  the  worldly  and  selfish  soul  is  the  contact  with 
unselfishness  and  generosity;  and  we  can  understand 
something  of  the  meaning  of  the  words,  "  Our  God  is 
a  consuming  fire." 


256  The  Moral  Life 

Therefore  it  is  well  and  healthful  for  the  soul  that 
every  man  should  breathe  at  times  the  pure  atmosphere 
of  the  infinite  and  ideal,  should  lift  up  his  eyes  unto 
the  hills  from  whence  cometh  his  aid,  should  retire  into 
the  ideal  world,  and  gaze  upon  the  archetypal  truth  and 
beauty  and  goodness  of  which  the  actual  world  is  but 
the  dim  reflection.  Some  must,  and  by  natural  vocation 
will,  consecrate  themselves  to  the  more  direct  and  im- 
mediate service  of  these  ideals.  The  man  of  science  and 
the  philosopher ;  the  artist,  whether  poet,  painter,  sculp- 
tor, or  musician ;  the  priest  or  minister  of  religion, — 
these  are,  in  a  peculiar  sense,  the  servants  of  the  ideal. 
But  they  are  only  the  representatives  of  our  common 
humanity  in  that  supreme  service  and  consecration.  And 
while  these  live  habitually  within  the  veil,  in  the  inner 
sanctuary  of  the  infinite,  it  is  needful  that  they  whose 
preoccupation  with  the  world's  business  detains  them  in 
the  outer  courts  of  the  finite  world,  if  they  would  pre- 
serve their  manhood  and  draw  strength  for  life's  casual 
duties,  should  sometimes  enter  too. 

10.  Dangers  of  moral  idealism. — Yet  we  must  never, 
in  our  devotion  to  the  ideal  and  infinite,  neglect  the  im- 
perative claims  of  the  actual  finite  world.  We  must  always 
return — even  the  ministers  of  the  ideal  in  art,  in  science, 
and  in  religion,  must  return — to  the  secular  life,  to  the 
finite  world  and  its  relations.  Nor  must  the  vision  of 
the  infinite  and  ideal  ever  be  allowed  to  distort  our 
vision  of  the  finite  and  actual.  Emancipation  from  the 
'  cave '  of  the  finite  brings  with  it  its  own  new  danger :  it 
tends  to  unfit  man  for  the  life  of  the  '  cave.'  Those  who 
have  lived  in  the  upper  air,  and  have  seen  the  absolute 
Reality,  are  apt  to  be  blinded  by  the  darkness  of  the  cave 
in  which  their  fellows  spend  their  lives,  and,  regarding 
all  its  concerns  as  shadowy  and  illusory,  to  lose  their 
interest  in  them.  They  are  apt,  as  Plato  said,  to  be 
awkward  and  easily  outwitted ;  for  their  souls  sit  loose 


Tlie  Individual  Life  257 

to  this  world,  and  dwell  apart.  The  peculiar  temptation 
of  genius,  moral,  aesthetic,  or  intellectual ;  the  peculiar 
temptation  of  those  whose  lives  are  spent  habitually  in 
the  infinite  relations, — is  to  minimise  the  finite,  and  fail 
to  see  the  infinite  shining  through  it.  Gazing  at  the  stars, 
they  are  in  danger  of  falling  into  the  well.  So  it  is  that 
'  respectability '  is  often  on  a  higher  ethical  plane  than 
genius  and  saintship.  Even  Plato  said  that  we  must 
bring  the  travellers  back  to  the  cave,  and  force  them  to 
take  their  part  in  its  life ;  idealist  and  transcendentalist 
though  he  was,  he  saw  that  most  men  must  live  in  the 
cave.  No  service  of  the  ideal  will  atone  for  unfaithful- 
ness in  the  actual.  "  He  that  is  unfaithful  in  that  which 
is  least  is  unfaithful  also  in  much."  The  individual's 
duty  is  determined  and  defined  by  his  station,  or  his 
place  in  the  actual  finite  relations ;  and  even  his  culti- 
vation of  the  ideal  must  be  regulated  by  the  imperious 
claims  of  this  moral  station.  We  know  how  inexorably 
severe  were  Carlyle's  judgments  of  self-condemnation  for 
his  failure  in  the  little  services  of  domestic  piety ;  how, 
if  these  judgments  were  even  in  a  measure  true,  his 
'  spectral '  view  of  life,  his  preoccupation  with  the  '  im- 
mensities and  eternities,'  shut  out  from  his  field  of  vision 
the  duty  that  lay  next  him.  Carlyle's  uncorrupted  moral 
insight  finds  in  his  genius,  which  was  perhaps  as  much 
moral  as  intellectual  in  its  quality,  no  excuse  for  short- 
coming in  the  '  minor  moralities  '  of  life.  Nor  does  the 
world's  keen  moral  judgment  find  in  the  peculiar  religious 
attainments  of  '  professing  Christians '  any  excuse  for 
such  obvious  moral  defects  as  malice  and  ill-temper.  In 
such  cases  the  severity  of  our  judgment  is  apt  to  be 
intensified  by  the  very  height  of  the  ideal  to  which  the 
life  professes  its  devotion.  The  highest  and  completest 
— the  sanest — natures  recognise  most  fully  this  claim  of 
the  actual,  and  most  willingly  surrender  themselves  to  the 
burden  of  its  fulfilment.  In  this  meekness  and  lowliness 
of  spirit  Wordsworth  sees  the  crown  of  Milton's  virtue : 

R 


258  The  Moral  Life 

"  Thy  soul  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart  .  .  . 

Pure  as  the  heavens,  majestic,  free, 
So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 

In  cheerful  godliness  ;  and  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay." 

And  Tennyson,  in  the  Idylls  of  the  King,  sings  in  a  like 
strain  of  the  ideal  life  : 

"  And  some  among  you  held  that  if  the  King 
Had  seen  the  sight,  he  would  have  sworn  the  vow; 
Not  easily,  seeing  that  the  King  must  guard 
That  which  he  rules,  and  is  but  as  the  hind 
To  whom  a  space  of  land  is  given  to  plough, 
Who  may  not  wander  from  the  allotted  field 
Before  his  work  be  done." 

So  must  each  man  be  content,  king  or  subject,  genius 
or  day-labourer,  to  go  forth  unto  his  labour  until  the 
evening ;  for  in  this  world  each  has  his  appointed  task, 
and  if  he  do  it  not,  it  will  be  left  undone.  Even  if  our 
duty  be  to  consecrate  ourselves,  in  science,  in  art,  or  in 
religion,  to  the  peculiar  service  of  the  ideal — the  noblest 
service  that  life  offers,  and  that  which  calls  for  the  high- 
est aptitudes — we  still  must  not  forget  that,  in  respect 
of  our  duties  in  the  actual,  we  stand  on  the  common 
level.  The  priest,  the  artist,  and  the  philosopher  are  also 
'  ordinary  men/  and  have  no  exemption  from  the  common 
domestic,  social,  and  civil  duties.  Such  exemption  would 
unfit  them  for  their  own  great  task — the  discovery  of 
life's  ideal  meaning,  and  its  interpretation  to  their  fellows. 
Nor  must  any  man  allow  his  excursions  into  the  ideal 
world  to  dull  the  edge  of  his  interest  in  the  ordinary 
business  of  life.  It  is  true  that  we  all  have  need  of 
leisure  from  the  very  finite  occupations  of  life  for  such 
communion  with  the  infinite ;  for  in  that  communion  the 
soul's  best  life  is  rooted,  and  it  will  wither  if  not  well 
tended.  The  world  of  knowledge,  of  art,  of  religion,  does 
claim  us  for  itself,  and  our  visits  to  it  ought  to  be  all  the 


The  Individual  Life  259 

more  frequent  because  our  actual  world  is  apt  to  be  so 
meagre  and  confined.  But  our  acquaintance  with  the 
splendours  of  its  many  mansions  must  never  breed  in  our 
souls  contempt  for  the  narrowness  and  the  mean  appoint- 
ments of  the  house  of  our  earthly  pilgrimage.  It  is  a 
danger  and  temptation  neither  unreal  nor  unfamiliar. 
Let  us  take  two  illustrations  of  it. 

The  artistic  temper  is  apt  to  be  impatient  of  the 
commonplaceness  of  its  daily  life ;  we  are  wont,  indeed, 
to  attribute  to  it  a  kind  of  practical  irresponsibility.  Led 
by  visions  of  the  beautiful  into  the  romantic  country 
of  the  imagination,  the  spirit  is  loath  to  return  to  the 
prosaic  fields  of  ordinary  daily  duty.  Its  emotions  are 
ideal,  and  seem  to  find  no  issue  in  action  on  the  earthly 
plane ;  and  more  and  more  it  comes  to  feel  that  there  is 
no  scope  for  such  emotions  in  the  actual  world.  The  other 
world — the  world  of  the  imagination — is  so  much  more 
interesting  and  exciting  that,  by  comparison  with  it,  the 
actual  world  of  daily  life,  where  duties  lie,  seems  '  stale, 
flat,  and  unprofitable.'  It  is  the  Quixotic  temper  which 
we  all  know  in  childhood.  Nothing  will  satisfy  us  but 
knight-errantry, — slaying  giants,  and  rescuing  fair  ladies. 
The  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  would  have  suited  us  much 
better  than  that  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  It  was  so 
much  more  picturesque,  there  was  so  much  more  colour, 
the  lights  were  brighter  and  the  shadows  deeper ;  life  was 
romantic  then.  But,  in  reality,  life  is  always  the  same ; 
it  presents  always  the  same  moral  opportunities.  The 
elementary  realities  do  not  change,  the  alphabet  of  human 
life  is  the  same  from  age  to  age.  The  imagination  is 
always  apt  to  picture  the  Golden  Age  of  life's  great 
opportunities  of  action  either  in  the  past  or  in  the  future, 
while  really,  if  we  had  eyes  to  see  them,  they  are  always 
in  the  present.  The  pattern  of  man's  life  may  be  very 
different  in  different  ages,  its  colours  may  be  brighter  or 
more  sombre  ;  but  its  warp  and  woof,  its  inner  texture,  is 
always  the  same,  and  is  wrought  of  the  threads  of  good 


260  The  Moral  Life 

and  evil,  virtue  and  vice,  faithfulness  and  unfaithfulness 
to  present  duty. 

Or  take  the  'saint'  who,  with  his  eye  fixed  on  the  Be- 
yond, abstracts  himself  from  this  earthly  life,  either  out- 
wardly as  in  mediaeval  Monasticism,  or  in  the  inner  life, 
like  many  a  modern  Protestant,  mingling  with  his  fellows 
as  if  he  were  not  of  them,  not  in  hypocrisy  or  pride,  but 
in  real  rapt  abstraction  of  spirit,  afraid  lest  he  soil  his 
hands  with  this  world's  business  and  render  them  unfit 
for  the  uses  of  the  heavenly  commerce.  Such  a  life  not 
only  misses  the  influence  it  might  have  exerted  on  the 
world,  but  proves  itself  unworthy  of,  and  unfit  for,  the 
higher  just  in  the  measure  that  it  fails  in  the  lower  duties. 
The  peculiar  human  way  to  the  ideal  is  through  utter 
faithfulness  in  the  actual ;  and  the  reason  why  we  need 
to  leave  the  actual  at  all  is  just  that  we  may  get  the 
inspiration  which  will  enable  us  to  see  the  ideal  in  it. 
It  requires  an  eye  that  has  seen  the  ideal  shining  in  its 
own  proper  strength,  to  detect  it  in  the  disappointing 
surroundings  of  the  actual.  In  activity,  not  in  passive 
contemplation,  lies  man's  salvation.  This  is  the  Chris- 
tian, as  distinguished  from  the  Buddhistic,  life ;  it  is 
also  modern,  as  distinguished  from  medieval,  Christianity. 
The  ideal  must  be  found,  after  all,  in  the  actual ;  the 
things  unseen  and  eternal  in  the  things  which  are  seen 
and  temporal ;  the  infinitely  true  and  beautiful  and  good 
in  the  finite  relations  of  daily  life.  It  is  the  function  of 
the  chosen  servants  of  the  ideal  to  open  the  eyes  of  their 
fellows,  that  they  may  see  life  even  on  '  this  bank  and 
shoal  of  time,'  sub  quddam  specie  ceternitatis ;  and  thus 
to  make  the  secular  for  them  henceforth  sacred,  the 
commonplace  infinitely  interesting  and  significant. 

11.  The  ethical  supremacy  of  the  moral  ideal — 
The  supreme  category  of  the  moral  life  is  the  good,  not 
as  excluding,  but  as  containing  in  itself,  the  beautiful 
and  the  true.  To  make  either  the  true  or  the  beautiful 


The  Individual  Life  261 

the  containing  notion  leads  to  moral  misappreciation. 
^stheticism.  and  intellectualism  are  both  ethically  un- 
satisfactory ;  the  former  is  weak,  as  the  latter  is  hard 
and  cold.  He  who  so  gives  himself  to  science  or  to 
philosophy  as  to  intellectualise  himself,  or  reduce  his 
entire  nature  to  terms  of  the  true,  does  not  even  reach 
the  highest  truth.  He  who  so  gives  himself  to  art  or 
the  culture  of  the  beautiful  as  to  sink  the  ethical  in  the 
aesthetic,  must  iniss  the  vision  of  the  highest  beauty. 
These  failures  teach  us  that  the  fundamental  term  of  our 
life  is  the  good ;  in  so  far  as  we  attain  to  this  ideal,  we 
shall  inevitably  attain  the  others  also.  Greek  ethics 
illustrate  the  inadequacy  alike  of  the  intellectual  and  of 
the  aesthetic  ideal.  For  both  Plato  and  Aristotle  the  ideal 
life  was  a  life  of  speculation  or  intellectual  contemplation, 
in  which  no  place  was  found  for  practical  activity  or  the 
play  of  the  ordinary  sensibilities.1  For  Plato's  artistic 
nature,  again,  as  for  the  Greeks  generally,  the  temptation 
always  was  to  conceive  the  good  under  the  form  of  the 
beautiful ;  and,  as  Pater  has  remarked,  for  Plato  "  the 
beautiful  would  never  come  to  seem  strictly  concentric 
with  the  good."  But  until  we  see  the  three  circles  as 
concentric,  we  do  not  see  any  one  of  them  as  it  really  is. 
The  Greeks  were  perhaps  too  intellectual  to  be  conscious 
of  the  danger  that  lay  in  a  too  exclusive  devotion  to  the 
intellectual  life ;  they  certainly  do  not  betray  such  a  con- 
sciousness. But  Plato,  poet  and  artist  though  he  is,  shows 
a  nervous  apprehension  of  the  dangers,  for  the  individual 
and  the  State,  that  lie  in  aastheticism.  He  has  no  place 
for  the  poets  in  his  ideal  State.  His  quarrel  with  them, 
it  is  to  be  noted,  is  a  characteristic  Greek  one :  the  poets 
are  condemned  primarily  in  the  interests  of  truth,  rather 
than  of  goodness;  they  are  the  great  deceivers.  Where 
truth  and  beauty  do  not  coincide,  Plato  would  seem  to 
say,  truth  must  be  preferred  to  beauty.  Art — the  poetic 

1  Both,  of  course,  as  we  have  seen,  recognised  the  practical  activities  and 
the  ordinary  sensibilities  as  virtuous  in  a  secondary  sense. 


262  The  Moral  Life 

art  at  least — being  in  its  essence  imitative,  substitutes 
fiction  for  reality,  and  its  fiction  is  apt  to  be  a  misrep- 
resentation of  the  real.  Therefore,  though  none  has  a 
higher  appreciation  of  literary  art  than  Plato,  though 
none  finds  a  more  honourable  place  for  '  music '  in  the 
education  of  the  ideal  man  and  citizen,  he  finds  himself 
compelled,  in  loyalty  to  the  higher  interests  of  truth,  to 
banish  the  poets  lest  they  corrupt  the  State  by  making  its 
citizens  believe  a  lie.  It  is  an  impressive  instance  of  the 
warfare  of  ideals,  and  of  faithfulness  to  the  highest  know- 
ledge. And  if  for  us  the  warfare  has  ceased  to  exist,  and 
the  circles  of  our  life's  interests  have  become  concentric, 
it  is  perhaps  not  so  much  because  we  have  reached  a 
truer  appreciation  of  the  function  of  art  than  Plato  knew, 
as  that  we  have  learned  to  include  both  the  aesthetic  and 
the  intellectual  life  as  elements  in  the  undivided  life  of 
goodness.  Let  us  separate  any  one  of  these  three  ideals 
from  the  others,  and  all  alike  are  in  that  measure  im- 
paired and  misunderstood.  We  can  see  that  even  the 
Greek  devotion  to  the  true  is  not  the  highest  or  completest 
devotion  of  human  life ;  our  devotion  to  the  true,  as  well 
as  to  the  beautiful,  must,  if  we  are  to  be  perfect,  be  part 
of  our  supreme  devotion  to  the  good.  Hence  the  supreme 
value  of  the  religious  life,  as  compared  with  the  other 
avenues  to  the  universal  and  the  infinite.  Our  deepest 
thought  of  God  is  righteousness ;  and  by  reason  of  this, 
its  ethical  basis,  the  religious  ideal  not  only  includes  the 
others,  but  also  comes  nearest  to  actual  life,  touching  the 
otherwise  commonplace  and  trivial  duties  of  the  finite 
relations  and  transfiguring  them,  shedding  over  all  the 
actual  the  light  of  the  ideal. 

12.  Culture  and  philanthropy. — Hence  also  it  is  in 
the  service  of  our  fellows  that  we  find  the  continual 
emancipation  from  the  prison-house  of  our  individual 
selfhood,  in  philanthropy  that  we  find  the  surest  and 
most  effective  method  of  our  self  -  development.  The 


TJie  Individual  Life  263 

lower  and  selfish  self,  because  it  is  selfish,  cannot  serve  > 
the  very  life  of  the  true  and  higher  self  consists  in 
ministry.  Nor  is  there  any  danger,  in  such  a  life,  of 
Quixotic  knight-errantry  or  abstract  moral  idealism,  of 
our  failing,  through  our  devotion  to  the  ideal,  in  our  duty 
to  the  actual.  The  most  commonplace  service,  '  the  cup 
of  cold  water,'  any  deed  done  for  another,  takes  us  entirely 
out  of  ourselves,  idealises  our  life,  breaks  down  its  limi- 
tations. For  a  true  ministry  to  any  human  need  implies 
a  perfect  sympathy  and  identification  of  ourselves  with 
the  needy  one,  and  we  know  the  enlargement  of  the 
spirit's  life  that  comes  with  such  a  sympathy.  It  opens 
up  other  worlds  of  experience — the  world  of  poverty,  of 
sickness,  of  sorrow,  of  doubt,  of  temptation,  of  sin;  it 
unlocks  the  secret  chambers  of  the  human  heart. 

How  much  the  man  misses  who,  with  miserly  greed, 
hoards  up  his  little  selfish  life  and  will  not  share  it  with 
his  fellows,  how  miserably  poor  and  valueless  even  to 
himself  his  life  becomes,  Butler  has  described  in  his 
strong,  clear,  didactic  manner  in  his  Sermons,  and  George 
Meredith  has  pictured  in  his  powerful  story  The  Egoist. 
Such  a  picture  George  Eliot  has  given  us  in  Silas  Marner, 
adding,  with  consummate  skill,  the  companion  picture  of 
the  deliverance  that  came  with  the  first  outgoings  of  the 
poor  shrunken  heart  towards  its  fellows,  and  how  there 
was  born  in  the  spirit  of  Silas  Marner,  through  the  love 
of  a  little  child,  a  new  and  larger  life.  The  specialist  in 
science,  the  business  man,  the  professional  man,  all  alike 
need  the  expansion  that  comes  from  such  a  contact  with 
the  universal  human  heart  and  its  universal  needs.  The 
least  apparently  significant  duty  to  our  fellows,  to  be 
adequately  done,  calls  forth  the  whole  man,  intellectual, 
emotional,  active;  and  it  is  most  wholesome  for  the 
'specialist' — and  more  and  more  we  all,  in  some  sense, 
are  becoming  specialists — to  be  distracted  from  a  too  entire 
preoccupation  with  his  peculiar  calling  by  the  common 
everyday  duties  of  our  human  life.  Many  illustrations 


264  The  Moral  Life 

might  be  offered  to  show  how  truly  such  a  service  of  others 
is  a  service  of  our  own  best  selves.  What  a  force,  for 
example,  in  self- development  is  the  faithful  and  adequate 
discharge  of  any  office  or  responsibility  :  men  grow  to  the 
dignity  of  their  calling,  and  duties  which  at  first  almost 
overpowered  them  become  in  the  end  no  burden  at  all. 
The  expectation  of  others,  silent  it  may  be  and  undefined, 
is  an  incalculable  force  in  steadying  and  elevating  a 
nature  which  might  otherwise  have  been  unstable  and 
even  have  become  ignoble.  To  feel  that  we  stand  to 
another  in  any  measure  for  the  ideal,  as  the  parent  stands 
to  the  child,  the  teacher  to  the  pupil,  the  preacher  to  his 
people,  and  friend  to  friend,  is  a  tremendous  spur  to  us  to 
live  up  to  and  justify,  not  disappoint,  these  expectations. 
Is  not  this  one  of  the  secrets  of  greatness  ?  To  stand, 
like  the  prophet  and  reformer,  to  a  whole  people  in  this 
relation,  must  be  an  immeasurable  stimulus  to  faithfulness 
to  the  responsibility  thus  created.  Christianity  has  done 
much  to  bring  home  to  the  human  mind  the  essential 
dignity  and  the  high  privilege  of  service,  and  to  teach  us 
how,  in  serving  our  fellows  and  in  bearing  one  another's 
burdens,  we  may  find  the  path  of  a  perfect  self-realisation. 
Here  we  find  the  bridge  from  the  individual  to  the  social 
virtues,  the  essential  identity  of  altruism  with  the  higher 
egoism.  In  this  also  lies  the  Christian  idea  of  moral 
greatness,  the  greatness  of  humility  and  self-sacrifice,  as 
opposed  to  the  greatness  of  pride  and  self-assertion,  the 
Pagan  vanity  and  pomp  of  individuality.  If  we  wish  to 
feel  the  contrast  of  the  Pagan  and  the  Christian  ideals  of 
greatness,  we  have  only  to  compare  the  Aristotelian  picture 
of  the  /i£7aA<tyux°e»  the  proud  aristocrat  who  lives  to 
prove  his  independence  and  superiority,  with  that  other 
picture  of  a  Life  that  poured  itself  out  in  the  service 
of  others,  that  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to 
minister,  that  was  willing,  for  the  sake  of  such  a  ministry, 
even  to  be  misunderstood.  This  picture  has  touched  the 
heart  of  the  world  as  the  other  never  could  have  touched 


TJie  Individual  Life  265 

it.  For  it  is  a  revelation  of  the  blessedness  that  lies  in 
escape  from  the  prison-house  of  the  private  and  selfish 
life,  and  entrance  into  the  universal  life  of  humanity. 

13.  Self-reverence. — Yet  it  is  never  to  be  forgotten 
that  the  moral  life  remains  always  a  personal,  and  even  an 
individual  life ;  it  never  becomes  impersonal  or  '  self-less.' 
The  unselfish  life  is  not  self-less  or  impersonal ;  rather,  as 
we  have  just  seen,  the  life  of  self  is  enlarged  and  enriched 
in  direct  proportion  to  the  unselfishness  of  that  life.  Even 
the  individuality  is  not,  in  such  self- development  any 
more  than  in  self-discipline,  negated  or  annihilated ;  it  is 
taken  up  into,  and  interpreted  by,  the  larger  social  good. 

Nor  must  we  forget  that  the  fundamental  and  essential 
attitude  of  a  man  towards  himself  is  one  of  self-respect — 
what  Milton  calls  "  the  inward  reverence  of  a  man  towards 
his  own  person,"  reverence  for  the  humanity  which  he 
represents.  This  is  the  true  '  greatness  of  soul '  which  is 
perfectly  consistent  with  the  utmost  humility  as  to  our 
actual  achievements  and  individual  desert,  with  remorse 
and  shame  and  bitter  self-condemnation.  For  such  self- 
reverence  is  reverence  for  the  ideal  and  potential  manhood 
in  ourselves,  and  means  the  chastisement  of  the  actual  by 
comparison.  This  noble  self-consciousness  should  enable 
a  man  to  preserve  his  dignity  in  all  the  affairs  of  life,  and 
make  him,  in  the  true  sense,  sufficient  unto  himself,  his 
own  judge  and  his  own  approver.  We  are  told  that 
Goethe  had  no  patience  with  over-sensitive  people,  with 
those  "  histrionic  natures,"  who  "  seem  to  imagine  that 
they  are  always  in  an  amphitheatre,  with  the  assembled 
world  as  spectators  ;  whereas,  all  the  while,  they  are  play- 
ing to  empty  benches."  Doubtless,  if  we  filled  the  benches 
with  the  great  and  good  of  all  ages,  as  with  a  great  cloud 
of  witnesses,  and  brought  our  actions  to  the  penetrating 
gaze  of  their  clear  judgment,  such  a  consciousness  would 
be  most  beneficial  and  worthy.  But  we  are  far  too  apt 
to  be  play-acting  instead  of  living,  contented  if  only  we 


266  The  Moral  Life 

succeed  in  playing  a  certain  r6le,  and  appearing  to  be  what 
we  are  not.  Such  a  '  histrionic '  life  is  the  very  antithesis 
of  the  good  life ;  and,  when  detected,  it  is  rightly  named 
'  hypocrisy.'  The  hypocrite  wants  to  get,  not  to  be.  But 
oftener  it  passes  undetected,  and  gains  the  applause  for 
which  it  has  striven.  And  even  those  who  are  not  con- 
sciously masquerading,  for  whom  life  is  real  and  earnest, 
are  too  apt  to  be  dependent  upon  the  judgment  of  others, 
and  to  forget  that  a  man  is  called  upon  to  be  his  own 
judge,  and  in  all  things  to  live  worthily  of  himself.  The 
general  level  of  moral  opinion  subtly  insinuates  itself  into 
our  judgments  of  ourselves,  we  lose  our  independence,  and 
sink  below  our  own  true  level. 

All  strong  natures  are  self-contained ;  it  is  the  secret 
of  moral  peace  and  calm,  the  mark  of  the  wise  and  good 
of  every  age.  "  Such  a  man  feels  that  to  fail  in  any  act 
of  kindness  and  helpfulness  would  be  foreign  to  his 
nature.  It  would  be  beneath  him.  His  sense  of  honour 
forbids  him  to  stoop  to  anything  selfish,  petty,  or  mean. 
.  .  .  The  opulent  or  royal  soul  that  has  felt  itself  to  be 
one  with  the  great  human  life  about  it,  would  feel  itself 
narrowed,  and  thus  dishonoured,  by  any  act  through 
which  it  should  cut  itself  off  from  these  larger  rela- 
tions." *  It  would  feel  like  a  prince  deposed.  "  In  this 
sense  it  is  that  we  may  speak  of  stooping  to  a  selfish  act, 
or  may  say  that  such  an  act  is  not  only  foreign  to  the 
nature,  but  is  unworthy  of  it  and  beneath  it."  2  So  sub- 
limely independent,  so  nobly  self-contained,  is  the  life  of 
personality.  The  good  man  is  at  home  with  himself,  and 
his  real  life  is  an  inner  rather  than  an  outer  life. 

"  The  world  is  too  much  with  us ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers." 

The  moral  weakling  lives  always,  or  for  the  most  part, 
abroad,  and  never  retires  within  himself,  to  find  behind 
the  veil  of  his  own  inner  being  that  vision  of  the  perfect 

1  C.  C.  Everett,  Poetry,  Comedy,  and  Duty,  p.  245.  2  Ibid.,  p.  246. 


The  Individual  Life  2GV 

life  for  which  the  spirit  yearns.  For  the  lowly  and  con- 
trite heart  is  His  temple  who  dwelleth  not  in  temples 
made  with  hands,  and  the  pure  and  upright  soul  is  his 
continual  abode.  But  this  truly  '  sacred  place '  must  be 
kept  sacred ;  and  it  cannot  be,  if  it  is  opened  to  all  the 
riot  and  confusion  of  the  market-place.  "  Solitude  is  to 
character  what  space  is  to  the  tree."  The  loneliness  of 
personality  is  never  to  be  forgotten ;  "  the  heart  knoweth 
his  own  bitterness,  and  a  stranger  doth  not  intermeddle 
with  his  joy."  In  a  deep  sense,  we  are  separate  from 
one  another,  and  every  man  must  bear  his  own  burden. 
The  walls  of  personality  shut  us  in,  each  within  the 
chamber  of  his  own  being  and  his  own  destiny.  It  is 
therefore  good,  and  most  necessary,  for  a  man  to  be  alone 
with  himself.  It  was  one  of  the  most  genial  and  social- 
hearted  of  men  who  said :  "  If  the  question  was  eternal 
company,  without  the  power  of  retiring  within  yourself,  I 
should  say, '  Turnkey,  lock  the  cell.' " l  But,  happily,  that 
is  not  the  alternative.  In  the  solitary  places  of  the  human 
heart,  in  the  deep  quiet  valleys  and  on  the  high  moun- 
tain-tops of  our  moral  being,  is  to  be  found  the  goodly 
fellowship  of  the  great  and  noble  of  all  the  ages  of  man's 
long  history — nay,  the  fellowship  of  the  Universal  Spirit, 
the  meeting-place  of  man  with  God.  We  must  cherish  the 
solitude,  even  as  we  would  cherish  that  fellowship.2 

1  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Journal. 

2  Archbishop  Trench  has  given  striking  expression  to  this  feeling  in  the 
following  sonnet : 

"A  wretched  thing  it  were,  to  have  our  heart 
Like  a  thronged  highway  or  a  populous  street; 
Where  every  idle  thought  has  leave  to  meet, 
Pause,  or  pass  on,  as  in  an  open  mart ; 
Or  like  some  roadside  pool,  which  no  nice  art 
Has  guarded  that  the  cattle  may  not  beat 
And  foul  it  with  a  multitude  of  feet, 
Till  of  the  heavens  it  can  give  back  no  part. 
But  keep  thou  thine  a  holy  solitude, 
For  He  who  would  walk  there,  would  walk  alone  ; 
He  who  would  drink  there,  must  be  first  endued 
With  single  right  to  call  that  stream  his  own ; 
Keep  thou  thine  heart,  close-fastened,  unrevealed, 
A  fenced  garden,  and  a  fountain  sealed. " 


268  Tlie  Moral  Life 


LITERATURE. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  chs.  iii.,  iv.,  v.  (3rd  ed.) 

J.  Dewey,  Outlines  of  Ethics,  parts  ii.  and  iii. ;  Study  of  Ethics,  ch.  ix. 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  iv. 

F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  Essays  v.,  vL 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  iv.  ch.  i. 

C.  F.  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  ii.  chs.  ix.,  x.,  xi. 

S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  ii.  ch.  vi. 

L.  Stephen,  Science  of  Ethics,  ch.  v. 

H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  part  iii. 

Wundt,  Ethik,  pp.  511-529. 

Paulsen,  System  der  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  pp.  369-466. 

Hoffding,  Ethik,  pp.  124-181. 


269 


CHAPTEE    II. 

THE    SOCIAL    LIFE. 

I. — The  Social  Virtues :  Justice  and  Benevolence. 

1.  The  relation  of  the  social  to  the  individual  life. — 
Man  has  social  or  other-regarding,  as  well  as  individual 
or  self -regarding,  impulses  and  instincts.  By  nature, 
and  even  in  his  umnoralised  condition,  he  is  a  social 
being.  But  this  sympathetic  or  altruistic  nature  must, 
equally  with  the  selfish  and  egoistic,  be  formed  and 
moulded  into  the  virtuous  character;  the  primary  feel- 
ing for  others,  like  the  primary  feeling  for  self,  is  only 
the  raw  material  of  the  moral  life.  And  the  law  of  the 
process  of  moralisation  is  the  same  in  both  cases ;  the 
virtuous  attitude  towards  others  is  essentially  the  same 
as  the  virtuous  attitude  towards  ourselves.  For  in  others, 
as  in  ourselves,  we  are  called  upon  to  recognise  the  attri- 
bute of  personality.  They,  too,  are  ends  in  themselves ; 
their  life,  like  our  own,  is  one  of  self-realisation,  of  self- 
development  through  self -discipline.  We  must  treat 
them,  therefore,  as  we  treat  ourselves,  as  persons.  The 
law  of  the  individual  life  is  also  the  law  of  the  social 
life,  though  in  a  different  and  a  wider  application.  Virtue 
is  fundamentally  and  always  personal ;  and  when  we 
have  discovered  the  law  of  the  individual  life,  we  have 
already  discovered  that  of  the  social  life.  Since  men  are 
not  mere  individuals,  but  the  bearers  of  a  common  per- 


270  The  Moral  Life 

sonality,  the  development  in  the  individual  of  his  true 
selfhood  means  his  emancipation  from  the  limitations  of 
individuality,  and  the  path  to  self-realisation  is  through 
the  service  of  others.  Not  that  we  serve  others,  the 
better  to  serve  ourselves :  we  ought  not  to  regard  an- 
other person  as  the  instrument  even  of  our  highest  self- 
development.  They,  too,  are  ends  in  themselves :  to 
them  is  set  the  self-same  task  as  to  ourselves,  the  task 
of  self-realisation.  The  law  of  the  moral  life,  the  law 
of  personality,  covers  the  sphere  of  social  as  well  as 
of  individual  duty ;  and  that  law  is :  "  So  act  as  to  treat 
humanity,  whether  in  thine  own  person  or  in  that  of 
another,  always  as  an  end,  never  as  a  means  to  an  end." 
We  may  use  neither  ourselves  nor  others.  Truly  to 
serve  humanity,  therefore,  is  to  realise  ourselves,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  aid  others  in  the  same  task  of  self- 
realisation.  In  serving  others,  we  are  serving  ourselves ; 
in  serving  ourselves,  we  are  serving  others.  For,  in 
both  cases,  we  serve  that  humanity  which  must  ever  be 
served,  and  which  may  never  serve. 

The  life  of  virtue,  even  on  its  social  side,  is  still  a 
personal,  not  an  impersonal  life.  This  is  apt  to  be 
overlooked,  owing  to  the  illusion  of  the  term  '  social '  and 
the  antithesis,  so  commonly  emphasised,  between  the 
individual  and  the  social  life.  The  individual  and  the 
social  are  in  reality  two  aspects  of  the  one  undivided 
life  of  virtue,  and  their  unity  is  discovered  with  their 
reduction  to  the  common  principle  of  personality.  The 
social  life  is,  equally  with  the  individual  life,  personal ; 
and  the  personal  life  is  necessarily  at  once  individual 
and  social.  We  must  not  be  misled  by  the  phrase  '  social 
life,'  as  if  society  had  a  life  of  its  own  apart  from  its 
individual  members ;  society  is  the  organisation  of  in- 
dividuals, and  it  is  they  who  live,  not  it.  Apart  from 
its  individual  members,  society  would  be  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion; but  we  are  too  apt,  here  as  elsewhere,  to  hypos- 
tatise  abstractions.  In  reality,  society  is  not  an  organism, 


The  Social  Life  271 

but  the  ethical  organisation  of  individuals.  Obviously, 
\ve  must  not  isolate  the  organisation  or  the  relation  from 
the  beings  organised  or  related ;  this  would  be  a  new 
case  of  the  old  Scholastic  Kealism,  or  substantiation  of 
the  universal.  Moral  reality,  like  all  finite  reality,  is, 
in  the  last  analysis,  individual.  But  while  the  life  of 
virtue  is  always  individual,  it  is  never  merely  individual : 
to  be  personal,  it  must  be  social.  If  in  one  sense  each 
lives  a  separate  life,  yet  in  another  sense  "  no  man  liveth 
unto  himself."  A  common  personality  is  to  be  realised 
in  each,  and  in  infinite  ways  the  life  of  each  is  bound 
up  with  that  of  all.  Only,  the  individual  must  never 
lose  himself  in  the  life  of  others.  As  a  person,  he  is  an 
end  in  himself,  and  has  an  infinite  worth.  He  has  a 
destiny,  to  be  wrought  out  for  himself ;  the  destiny  of 
society  is  the  destiny  of  its  individual  members.  The 
'  progress  of  the  race '  is,  after  all,  the  progress  of  the 
individual.  The  ethical  end  is  personal,  first  and  last. 
As  the  individual  apart  from  society  is  an  unreal  ab- 
straction, so  is  society  apart  from  the  individual.  The 
ethical  unit  is  the  person. 

Thus  we  can  see  that  there  is  no  necessary  antagonism 
between  individualism,  truly  understood,  and  socialism, 
truly  understood.  Nay,  the  true  socialism  is  the  true 
individualism,  the  discovery  and  the  development  of  the 
person  in  the  individual.  Society  exists  for  the  indi- 
vidual, it  is  the  mechanism  of  his  personal  life.  All 
social  progress  consists  in  the  perfecting  of  this  mechan- 
ism, to  the  end  that  the  moral  individual  may  have 
more  justice  and  freer  play  in  the  working  out  of  his 
own  individual  destiny.  The  individualism  of  the  mere 
individual  means  moral  chaos,  and  is  suicidal;  such  a 
life  is,  as  Hobbes  described  it,  "  poor,  nasty,  dull,  brutish, 
and  short."  But  the  individualivsm  of  the  person  is,  in 
its  idea  at  least,  synonymous  with  the  true  socialism, 
and  the  true  democracy  with  the  true  aristocracy.  For 
social  progress  does  not  mean  so  much  the  massing  of 


272  The  Moral  Life 

individuals  as  the  individualisation  of  the  social  mass ; 
the  discovery,  in  the  'masses,'  of  that  same  humanity, 
individual  and  personal,  which  had  formerly  been  dis- 
cerned only  in  the  '  classes.'  The  truly  social  ideal  is  to 
make  possible  for  the  many — nay,  for  all,  or  better  for 
each — that  full  and  total  life  of  personality  which,  to  so 
large  an  extent,  is  even  still  the  exclusive  possession  of 
the  few.  Social  organisation  is  never  an  end  in  itself, 
it  is  always  a  means  to  the  attainment  of  individual 
perfection. 

2.  Social  virtue :  its  nature  and  its  limit.  —  We 
have  seen  that  social  or  altruistic  impulse,  like  individual 
or  egoistic,  is  only  the  raw  material  of  virtue,  part  of  that 
nature  which  has  to  be  moralised  into  character.  Mere 
'good- will'  or  'sociality'  is  not  the  virtue  of  benevolence ; 
the  natural  inclination  to  help  others  needs  guidance,  and 
may  have  to  be  restrained.  So  true  is  Kant's  contention 
that  natural  impulse  or  inclination  has,  as  such,  no 
ethical  value.  We  have  also  seen  that  the  law,  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other,  is  found  in  personality.  Each 
man,  being  an  ego  or  person,  has  the  right  to  the  life  of 
a  person.  The  true  moral  attitude  of  other  persons  to 
him,  therefore,  is  the  same  as  his  attitude  towards  him- 
self;  and  accordingly  social,  like  individual,  virtue  has 
two  sides,  a  negative  and  a  positive.  The  attitude  of  the 
virtuous  man  towards  his  fellows  is  first,  negatively,  the 
making  room  for  or  not  hindering  their  personal  life,  and 
secondly,  the  positive  helping  of  them  to  such  a  life,  the 
removing  of  obstacles  from  their  way,  and  the  bringing 
about  of  conditions  favourable  to  their  personal  develop- 
ment. Here,  with  the  conditions  of  the  moral  life  in  pur 
fellows,  we  must  stop ;  no  man  can  perform  the  moral 
task  for  another,  there  is  no  vicariousness  in  the  moral 
life.  Not  even  God  can  make  a  man  good.  Goodness, 
by  its  very  nature,  must  be  the  achievement  of  the  indi- 
vidual :  each  must  work  out  his  own  salvation.  The 


The  Social  Life  273 

individual  must  fight  his  own  battles,  and  win  his  own 
victories ;  and  if  he  is  defeated,  he  must  suffer,  and  strive 
through  suffering  to  his  final  perfection.  The  moral  life 
is  essentially  a  personal  life;  in  this  sense  all  morality  is 
private.  Life  lies  for  each  in  '  the  realisation  of  self  by 
self ' ;  that  is  our  peculiar  human  dignity  and  privilege 
and  high  responsibility,  and  it  is  not  allowed  that  any 
man  come  between  us  and  our  '  proper  business.'  But 
everything  short  of  this  moral  interference  and  imperti- 
nence we  may  do  for  our  fellows.  '  Environment '  counts 
for  much,  especially  the  social  environment ;  and  we  can 
improve  the  moral  environment  of  those  whom  we  wish 
to  aid.  The  will  may  be  stimulated  by  suggestions  from 
another,  though  no  amount  of  pressure  can  coerce  it 
Ideals  are  potent,  and,  once  accepted,  seem  to  realise 
themselves ;  and,  especially  by  our  own  practice  and  ex- 
ample, we  may  suggest  true  moral  ideals  to  others.  In 
such  ways,  society  can  stimulate  in  the  individual,  and 
individuals  can  stimulate  in  their  fellows,  the  life  of  virtue. 
Only,  we  cannot  take  the  moral  task  out  of  the  hands  of 
the  individual,  we  cannot  even  strictly  co-operate  with 
him  in  the  execution  of  that  task.  Such  is  the  solitari- 
ness of  the  moral  life. 

3.  Its  two  aspects,  negative  and  positive :  justice 
and  benevolence. — Social  virtue,  on  its  negative  side, 
we  may  call  justice,  with  its  corresponding  duty  of  free- 
dom or  equality ;  on  its  positive  side,  we  may  call  the 
virtue  benevolence,  and  the  duty  fraternity  or  brother- 
liness.  I  use  these  terms,  of  course,  very  generally,  to 
cover  much  more  than  civic  excellence  in  the  one  case, 
and  than  what  is  ordinarily  called  philanthropy  in  the 
other.  Whenever  I  do  not  repress  another  personality, 
but  allow  it  room  to  develop,  I  am  just  to  it ;  whenever, 
in  any  of  the  senses  above  suggested,  I  help  another  in 
the  fulfilment  of  his  moral  task,  I  exercise  towards  him 
the  virtue  of  benevolence. 

s 


274  The  Moral  Life 

There  is  the  same  kind  of  relation  between  justice  and 
benevolence  in  the  social  life  as  between  temperance  and 
culture  in  the  individual  life.  As  temperance  is  the 
presupposition  of  a  true  culture,  so  is  justice  the  presup- 
position of  a  true  benevolence.  This  logical  priority  is 
also  a  practical  priority.  We  must,  be  just  before  we 
can  be  generous :  we  earn  the  higher  power  by  our  faith- 
ful exercise  of  the  lower.  This  is  obvious  enough  in  the 
case  of  political  action ;  the  philanthropy  of  the  State 
must  be  founded  on  justice,  the  interests  of  security  form 
the  basis  of  the  interests  of  well-being.  Indeed,  the 
benevolence  of  the  State  is  really  a  higher  justice.  But 
the  principle  is  not  less  true  of  the  relations  of  individuals 
to  one  another ;  here,  too,  benevolence  is  only  justice  made 
perfect.  When  the  parent,  out  of  a  full  heart  and  with- 
out a  thought  of  self-interest,  does  his  best  for  his  child, 
when  friend  acts  thus  by  friend,  or  teacher  by  scholar, 
what  is  each  doing  but  striving  to  mete  out  to  the  other 
the  full  measure  of  a  perfect  justice  ?  More  or  higher 
than  that,  no  man  can  ask  from  another  and  no  man  can 
give  to  his  fellow.  The  distinction,  though  so  convenient, 
is  artificial ;  it  is  one  of  those  division-lines  which,  since 
they  do  not  exist  in  reality,  disappear  with  a  deeper  insight 
into  the  nature  of  things.  Most  pernicious  have  been  the 
effects  of  the  neglect  of  the  true  relation  of  priority  in 
which  justice  stands  to  benevolence.  The  Christian  mor- 
ality, as  actually  preached  and  practised,  has  been  largely 
chargeable  with  this  misinterpretation.  'Charity '  has 
been  magnified  as  the  grand  social  virtue,  and  has  been 
interpreted  as  a  '  giving  of  alms '  to  the  poor,  a  doing  for 
them  of  that  which  they  are  unable  to  do  for  themselves, 
an  alleviation,  more  or  less  temporary,  of  the  evils  that 
result  from  the  misery  of  their  worldly  circumstances. 
But  this  charity  has  coexisted  with  the  utmost  injustice 
to  those  who  have  been  its  objects.  Instead  of  attacking 
the  stronghold  of  the  enemy — the  poverty  itself,  the 
shameful  inequality  of  conditions — the  Church  as  a  social 


The  Social  Life  275 

institution,  and  individuals  in  their  private  capacity  or  in 
other  forms  of  association,  have  apparently  accepted  the 
evil  as  permanent  and  inevitable,  or  have  even  welcomed 
it  as  the  great  opportunity  of  the  moral  life.  It  has  been 
assumed  that  we  must  always  have  the  poor  with  us,  and 
their  poverty  has  been  regarded  as  a  splendid  field  for  the 
exercise  of  the  virtue  of  benevolence.  Yet  a  moment's 
reflection  will  convince  us  that  this  virtue  cannot  find  its 
exercise  in  the  field  of  injustice :  the  only  field  for  its 
development  is  one  which  has  been  prepared  for  it  by  the 
sharp  ploughshare  of  a  thoroughgoing  justice.  Injustice 
and  benevolence  cannot  dwell  together ;  and  when  justice 
has  done  its  perfect  work,  there  will  be  little  left  for  the 
elder  philanthropy  to  do,  and  charity  will  be  apt  to  find 
its  occupation  gone.  "When  the  causes  of  distress  have 
been  removed,  the  distress  itself  will  not  have  to  be 
relieved,  and  benevolence  will  find  its  hands  free  for  other 
and  better  work.  When  all  have  justice,  those  who  now 
need  help  will  be  independent  of  it,  and  men  will  learn 
at  last  that  the  best  help  one  man  can  give  to  another 
is  to  help  him  to  help  himself.  It  is  because  we  have 
really  given  our  fellows  less  than  justice,  that  we  have 
seemed  to  give  them  more. 

For  what  is  justice  ?  Is  it  not  to  recognise  in  our 
fellow-man  an  alter  ego,  and  to  love  our  neighbour  as 
ourselves  ?  Is  it  not  the  principle  of  moral  equality — 
that  each  shall  count  for  one,  and  no  one  for  more  than 
one  ?  And  when  we  remember  that  the  reckoning  is 
to  be  made  not  merely  in  terms  of  physical  life  or  of 
material  well-being,  but  in  terms  of  personality ;  that 
we  are  called  upon  to  treat  our  fellow-man  as  literally 
another  self,  to  put  ourselves  in  his  place,  and  to  take 
towards  him,  as  far  as  may  be,  his  own  attitude  towards 
himself, — do  we  not  find  that  such  equality  is  synony- 
mous with  fraternity,  that  others  are  in  very  truth  our 
fellows  and  our  brothers  in  the  moral  life  ?  Might  it 
not  be  less  misleading  to  speak  only  of  justice  in  the 


276  The  Moral  Life 

social  relations — of  negative  and  positive  justice — than 
of  justice  and  benevolence  ? 

The  fact  of  the  essential  identity  of  justice  and  benev- 
olence suggests  that  they  have  a  common  sphere.  That 
sphere  is  the  social,  and,  more  particularly,  the  political 
life.  Yet  here  also  there  is  a  distinction  within  the 
identity.  While  both  virtues  may  be  exercised  in  the 
political  sphere,  it  is  of  the  genius  of  justice  to  spend 
itself  upon  the  community,  of  benevolence  to  single  out 
the  individual.  The  State  is  the  sphere  of  justice,  and 
in  the  eyes  of  the  State  all  its  citizens  are  alike — each 
counts  for  one,  and  no  one  for  more  than  one.  The 
peculiar  sphere  of  benevolence  or  the  higher  justice  is 
that  of  private  and  domestic  life,  and  of  the  non-politi- 
cal association  of  individuals.  The  characteristically  in- 
dividual nature  of  this  aspect  of  virtue  was  recognised 
by  the  Greeks,  whose  name  for  it  was  '  friendship.'  So 
far  is  the  conception  carried  that  Aristotle  is  led  to 
question  whether  we  can  have  more  than  one  true 
friend,  whether  it  is  possible  to  stand  in  this  relation 
of  perfect  fellowship  to  more  than  one  individual;  for 
hardly  shall  we  find  more  than  one  alter  ego,  happy 
indeed  are  we  if  we  find  even  one.  The  modern  con- 
ception is  that  of  universal  love  or  '  humanity.'  But  the 
essence  of  the  virtue  is  the  same  in  both  cases, — 
brotherliness  or  fellowship.  This  conception  signalises 
that  intimateness  of  the  relation  which  converts  justice 
into  benevolence,  or  imperfect  into  perfect  justice.  Where 
justice  insists  upon  the  equality  of  men  in  virtue  of  their 
common  personality,  benevolence  seizes  the  individuality 
in  each.  Benevolence  is  more  just  than  justice,  because 
it  is  enlightened  by  the  insight  into  that  '  inequality ' 
and  uniqueness  of  individuals  which  is  no  less  real  than 
the  '  equality  '  of  persons. 

4.  Benevolence. — It  is  in  the  case  of  benevolence 
especially  that  we  realise  the  necessity  of  the  regulation 


The  Social  Life  27V 

or  moralisation  of  the  original  natural  impulse  or  affec- 
tion. Whether  we  take  the  promptings  of  the  parent,  of 
the  friend,  of  the  patriot,  or  of  the  philanthropist,  we  see 
that  altruistic  impulse  is  originally  as  blind  as  egoistic, 
and  that  it  needs,  no  less  than  the  latter,  the  illumination 
of  reason.  We  need  the  wisdom  of  rational  insight  into 
the  good  of  another,  if  we  are  in  any  measure  to  aid  him 
in  the  attainment  of  that  good ;  and  all  our  benevolent 
activity  must  be  informed  and  directed  by  such  insight. 
Without  its  guidance,  we  cannot  be  really  'kind'  to 
another.  Unwise  kindness  is  not  kindness, — that,  for 
example,  of  the  '  indulgent '  parent,  teacher  or  friend,  of 
blind  philanthropy,  of  indiscriminate  charity.  The  vice 
of  such  conduct  is  that  it  destroys  the  self-reliance  and 
self-dependence  of  the  individual  so  blindly  '  loved.'  The 
only  true  benevolence  is  that  which  helps  another  to  help 
himself,  which,  by  the  very  aid  it  gives,  inspires  in  the 
recipient  a  new  sense  of  his  own  responsibility,  and  stirs 
him  to  a  better  life. 

It  is  amazing  how  potent  for  good  is  such  a  true  benev- 
olence ;  it  seems  to  touch  the  very  springs  of  the  moral 
life.  By  this  intimate  apprehension  of  a  brother's  nature 
and  a  brother's  task,  it  may  be  given  to  us  to  stir  within 
him  the  dying  embers  of  a  faith  and  hope  blighted  by 
failure  after  failure,  and  to  reawaken  in  him  the  old  high 
purpose  and  ideal  of  his  life.  The  fact  that  some  one 
else  has  a  real  and  unwavering  confidence  in  him,  sees  still 
in  him  the  lineaments  of  a  complete  and  noble  manhood, 
will  inspire  such  a  man  with  a  new  strength,  born  of  a  new 
hope.  There  was  once  a  purpose  in  his  life,  but  it  has 
long  ago  escaped  his  grasp,  and  seems  for  ever  frustrated ; 
what  once  was  possible  seems  possible  no  longer,  his  life 
is  broken  and  can  never  again  be  whole.  But  one  comes 
who  reminds  him  of  that  former  and  truer  self,  and 
reawakens  in  him  the  old  ideal.  The  way  back  may  be 
long  and  difficult ;  but  the  sight  of  the  goal,  even  at  such 
a  distance  and  up  such  steeps,  will  give  the  traveller 


278  The  Moral  Life 

strength  for  the  journey.  What  does  he  not  owe  to  him 
who  shows  him  the  open  path  ?  Zaccheus,  the  '  publican 
and  sinner/  owed  his  '  salvation ' — so  far  as  this  can  be 
a  debt — to  him  who  reminded  him  that,  in  his  deepest 
nature  and  best  possibility,  he  was  still  a  '  son  of  Abra- 
ham ' ;  and  others  who  had  fallen  lowest,  when  they  heard 
from  the  same  wise  and  tender  lips,  instead  of  the  scath- 
ing condemnation  they  had  feared,  the  words  of  a  deeper 
insight  and  a  larger  hope,  "  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee," 
— were  filled  with  a  new  strength  to  obey  the  authoritative 
command,  "  Go,  and  sin  no  more."  It  must  have  been 
this  grand  insight,  this  hand  of  brotherly  sympathy  and 
sublime  human  hope,  stretched  out  to  raise  a  fallen 
humanity  to  his  own  ideal  of  it,  that  made  tolerable  that 
teacher's  scathing  exposure  of  every  hidden  evil. 

And  even  in  the  ordinary  course  and  less  grave  occa- 
sions of  human  life,  we  must  acknowledge  the  power  for 
good  that  lies  in  a  sympathetic  appreciation  of  another's 
task,  and  of  his  capabilities  for  its  discharge.  The  parent 
may  thus  discover  in  the  child  possibilities  which  had  else 
remained  undiscovered  and  unrealised.  The  teacher  may 
thus  discover  in  the  pupil  the  potential  thinker,  scholar, 
artist,  and  awaken  in  him  the  hope  and  ambition  which 
will  be  a  life-long  inspiration.  Here  is  the  moral  value 
of  optimism  and  enthusiasm,  as  contrasted  with  pessimism 
and  cynicism.  If  we  would  help  another,  in  this  high 
sense  of  helpfulness,  we  must  believe  deeply,  and  hope 
strenuously,  and  bear  courageously  the  disappointment 
of  our  expectations  and  desires.  The  gloomy  severity  of 
condemnation,  unlit  by  any  ray  of  hope  of  better  things, 
which  marks  the  Puritanical  temper,  will  crush  a  life  which 
might  otherwise  have  been  lifted  up  to  a  higher  plane. 
"What  many  a  struggling  soul  needs  most  of  all  is  a  little 
more  self-reliance  and  buoyancy  of  hope ;  and  the  know- 
ledge that  another  has  confidence  in  him  will  breed  a 
new  confidence  in  himself.  Why  leave  unspoken  the  word 
of  encouragement  or  praise  which  might  mean  to  him  so 


The  Social  Life  279 

much  good,  out  of  the  foolish  fear  of  nourishing  in  him 
that  quality  of  self-conceit  which  may  be  entirely  absent 
from  his  character  ?  Aristotle's  observation  was  that  most 
men  suffered  from  the  opposite  fault  of  '  mean-spirited- 
ness  '  and  a  deficient  appreciation  of  their  own  powers. 

This  true  benevolence  means  getting  very  near  to  our 
fellow-man,  becoming  indeed  his  fellow,  identifying  our- 
selves with  him.  It  means  the  power  of  sympathy.  We 
are  apt  to  be  so  external  to  one  another,  and  '  charity '  is 
so  easily  given :  we  must  give  ourselves.  We  must  put 
ourselves  alongside  our  fellow  ;  we  must  enter  into  his  life 
and  make  it  our  own,  if  we  would  understand  it.  For 
such  an  understanding  of  another's  life,  such  a  right 
appreciation  of  another's  task,  is  not  easy.  It  is  apt  to 
seem  a  gift  of  moral  genius,  rather  than  a  thing  which 
may  be  learned.  The  perfection  of  it  is  found  in  love 
and  in  true  friendship,  where  a  man  finds  an  alter  ego  in 
another ;  and  perhaps,  as  Aristotle  says,  it  is  only  pos- 
sible to  have  one  such  'friend.'  But  there  is  a  great  call 
for  the  quality,  in  some  measure  of  it,  in  all  the  relations 
of  life ;  without  it,  no  true  benevolence  is  possible. 

5.  Benevolence  and  culture. — Such  benevolence  im- 
plies self-sacrifice.  The  altruistic  principle  of  life  does 
sometimes  conflict  with  the  egoistic,  even  in  its  higher 
forms.  The  question,  therefore,  inevitably  arises :  How 
far  ought  self-sacrifice  to  go  ?  Ought  devotion  to  the 
interests  of  others  to  supersede  the  individual's  devotion 
to  his  own  highest  interest  ?  This  is  a  peculiarly  modern 
difficulty,  and  arises  from  the  new  spirit  of  altruism  which 
Christianity  has  brought  into  our  ethical  life  and  thought. 
For  the  Greeks  the  question  did  not  arise  at  all.  They 
did  not  contemplate  the  possibility  of  any  real  conflict 
between  the  individual  and  the  social  good ;  to  them 
it  was  an  axiom  of  the  moral  life  that  the  individual 
received  back  with  interest  that  which  he  gave  to  the 
State.  In  the  Hellenic  State,  of  course,  many  gave  with- 


280  The  Moral  Life 

out  receiving ;  but  these  were  not  regarded  as  citizens, 
nor  did  their  life  enter  into  the  ethical  problem.  The 
many  existed  for  the  few,  but  the  few  existed  for  them- 
selves. A  life  of  complete  self-culture  was  the  Greek 
ideal,  and  a  man  could  never  be  called  upon  to  sacrifice  any 
part  of  that  life  for  the  sake  of  '  doing  good  '  to  his  fellow- 
men.  But  Christianity,  with  its  watchwords  of  service 
and  philanthropy,  has  forced  us  to  realise  with  a  new 
intensity  and  rigour  of  conviction  the  claim  of  others 
upon  our  life,  and  has  left  no  part  of  our  life  exempt 
from  the  claim.  Self-sacrifice,  rather  than  self-realisation, 
has  become  the  principle  of  life,  and  the  relation  of  the 
one  principle  to  the  other  has  become  the  most  baffling 
problem  of  ethical  thought.  That  all  niny  have  the 
opportunity  of  self-culture,  many  an  opportunity  of  self- 
culture  must  be  sacrificed  by  the  few.  The  very  possi- 
bility of  social  progress  implies  such  sacrifice  on  the  part 
of  the  existing  society  for  the  sake  of  the  generations  to 
come.  And  often  friend  must  be  willing  to  make  this 
sacrifice  for  friend,  and  parent  for  child,  and  teacher  for 
scholar,  and  neighbour  for  neighbour.  The  willingness  to 
make  such  sacrifices  without  the  certainty  or  even  the 
likelihood  of  compensation,  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the 
highest  goodness  we  know.  How  far  shall  self-sacrifice 
be  carried  ?  Does  a  loyal  and  thoroughgoing  self-sacrifice 
interfere  with  a  true  and  complete  self-realisation  ? 

The  whole  difficulty  arises  from  the  narrow  and  arbi- 
trary limitation  of  the  terms  '  self-culture '  and  '  self- 
realisation.'  In  the  true  or  moral  sense  of  these  terms, 
no  conflict  is  possible  between  the  ends  of  the  individual 
and  those  of  society.  The  individual  may  be  called  upon 
to  sacrifice,  for  example,  his  opportunity  of  aesthetic  or 
of  intellectual  culture ;  but  in  that  very  sacrifice  lies  his 
opportunity  of  moral  culture,  of  true  self-realisation. 
The  good  which  is  sacrificed  is  only  an  apparent  good ; 
the  good  to  which  it  is  sacrificed  is  the  real  or  moral 
good.  The  life  of  true  citizenship  may  mean  for  the 


The  Social  Life  281 

individual  a  willingness  to  die  for  his  country's  good, 
and  the  rightful  service  of  the  citizen  must  always  far 
transcend  the  limits  of  a  virtue  that  calculates  returns. 
Yet  the  State  can  never  legitimately  demand  of  the  indi- 
vidual a  moral  sacrifice,  or  ask  him  to  be  false  to  his  own 
ideals  of  life.  The  State,  being  an  ethical  institution, 
cannot,  without  contradicting  its  own  nature,  contradict 
the  moral  nature  of  the  individual ;  and  what  is  true  of 
the  State  is  true  of  all  other  institutions,  as  the  Family 
and  the  Church.  We  have  seen  that  the  best  service 
of  others  is  the  true  service  of  ourselves,  that  the  most 
effective  method  of  doing  good  is  to  be  good,  that  the 
truest  care  for  others  is  to  keep  carefully  the  vineyard 
of  our  own  nature.  And  since  service  implies  the  gift  to 
serve,  and  there  is  an  endless  diversity  of  gifts,  he  who 
finds  his  peculiar  work  and  mission  for  others  finds  that 
into  which  he  can  put  himself  —  the  channel  for  the 
expression  of  his  individual  capacities,  the  sphere  of  his 
self-realisation.  "When,  moreover,  we  remember  that  the 
good  of  the  moral  life  is  not  merely  individual  and  ex- 
clusive, but  universal  and  identical  in  all  individuals,  that 
the  moral  life  is  essentially  a  social  life,  the  postulate  of 
an  ultimate  harmony  between  the  life  of  benevolence  and 
the  life  of  culture  becomes  a  part  of  our  faith  in  the 
reasonableness  of  things. 

II. — The  social  organisation  of  life :  the  ethical  basis  and 
functions  of  the  State. 

0.  The  social  organisation  of  life  :  society  and  the 
State. — The  moral  life,  on  its  social  side,  organises  itself 
in  certain  external  forms  generally  described  as  the  ethical 
institutions  —  for  example,  the  Family,  the  State,  the 
Church.  The  total  social  organisation  may  be  called 
society,  and  the  most  important  of  its  special  forms — 
that  which  in  a  sense  includes  all  the  others — is  the 
political  organisation,  or  the  State.  Since  man  is  by 


282  The  Moral  Life 

nature  and  in  his  ethical  life  a  social  being,  he  is  inevit- 
ably also  a  political  being  (£wov  TroAmicov).  The  question 
is  thus  raised,  What  is  the  true  form  of  social  organisation  ? 
and,  more  particularly,  What  is  the  ethical  basis  and 
function  of  the  State  ?  How  far  should  society  become 
political  ? 

The  Greek  world,  we  may  say,  had  no  idea  of  a  non- 
political  society  ;  to  it  society  and  the  State  were  synony- 
mous terms,  the  social  life  was  a  life  of  citizenship.  The 
distinction  between  society  and  the  State  is  a  modern  one. 
The  Hellenic  State  was  an  adequate  and  satisfying  social 
sphere  for  the  individual ;  he  wanted  no  other  life  than 
that  of  citizenship,  and  could  conceive  no  perfect  life  for 
himself  in  any  narrower  social  world  than  that  of  the 
State.  So  perfect  was  the  harmony  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  State,  that  any  dissociation  of  the  one 
from  the  other  contradicted  the  individual's  conception 
of  ethical  completeness.  It  is  to  this  sense  of  perfect 
harmony,  this  deep  and  satisfying  conviction  that  the 
State  is  the  true  and  sufficient  ethical  environment  of 
the  individual,  that  we  owe  the  Greek  conception  of  the 
grand  significance  of  the  State.  Our  modern  antithesis 
of  the  individual  and  the  State  is  unknown ;  the  indi- 
vidual apart  from  the  State  is  to  the  Greek  an  unethical 
abstraction.  The  ethical  individual  is,  as  such,  a  citizen  ; 
and  the  measure  of  his  ethical  perfection  is  found  in  the 
perfection  of  the  State  of  which  he  is  a  citizen,  and  in 
the  perfection  of  his  citizenship.  We  find  this  charac- 
teristic Greek  conception  carried  to  its  consummation  in 
the  Republic  of  Plato.  This  is  at  once  a  treatise  on  pol- 
itics and  on  ethics,  on  the  State  and  on  justice.  Plato's 
problem  is  to  find  the  ideal  State,  or  the  perfect  sphere  of 
the  perfect  life.  The  good  man  will  be  the  good  citizen 
of  the  good  State,  and  without  the  outer  or  political  ex- 
cellence the  inner  or  ethical  excellence  is  of  little  avail. 
The  just  man  is  not  an  isolated  product,  he  is  not  even 
'  self-made ';  he  grows  up  in  the  perfect  State,  and  un- 


The  Social  Life  283 

consciously  takes  on  the  colour  of  its  laws ;  he  is  its 
scholar,  and,  even  in  the  inmost  centres  of  his  life,  he 
feels  its  beneficent  control.  To  separate  himself  from  it 
in  any  particular,  were  moral  suicide ;  to  seek  to  have 
a  '  private  life,'  or  to  call  anything  '  his  own,'  were  to 
destroy  the  very  medium  of  his  moral  being,  to  seek  to 
play  his  part  without  a  stage  on  which  to  play  it.  That 
is  to  say,  social  organisation  is  necessary  to  the  perfection 
of  the  individual  life ;  and  the  only  perfect  social  organi- 
sation is  the  communistic  State,  which  directly  and  imme- 
diately controls  the  individual,  and  recognises  no  rights, 
individual  or  social,  but  its  own. 

But  the  growing  complexity  of  the  ethical  problem, 
the  growing  perception  of  the  significance  of  personality, 
and  the  growing  dissatisfaction  with  the  State  as  the 
ethical  sphere  of  the  individual,  led  even  the  Greeks  them- 
selves to  a  revision  of  their  view  of  the  relation  of  the 
individual  to  the  State.  Greek  ethics  close  with  the  cry 
of  individualism  and  cosmopolitanism.  The  State  proved 
its  ethical  insufficiency,  as  the  individual  discovered  his 
ethical  self-sufficiency;  the  outward  failure  co-operated 
with  the  deeper  inward  reflection,  to  effect  the  transition 
from  the  ancient  to  the  modern  standpoint.  Christianity, 
with  its  universal  philanthropy,  its  obliteration  of  national 
distinctions,  its  insistence  upon  the  absolute  value  of  the 
individual,  its  deeper  and  intenser  appreciation  of  person- 
ality, added  its  new  strength  to  the  forces  already  in 
operation.  The  political  societies  of  the  ancient  world 
were  gradually  supplanted  by  a  Catholic  ecclesiastical 
society.  The  Church  to  a  large  extent  displaced  the 
State,  and  reasserted  on  its  own  behalf  the  State's  ex- 
clusive claim  upon  the  life  of  the  individual.  Controversy 
was  thus  inevitably  aroused  as  to  the  respective  jurisdic- 
tions of  Church  and  State.  The  Family,  too,  acquired  a 
new  importance  and  a  new  independence.  The  break- 
down of  feudalism — the  political  order  of  the  Middle  Ages 
— was  followed  by  the  break-down  of  its  ecclesiastical 


284  The  Moral  Life 

order  also,  and  the  individual  at  last  stood  forth  in  all 
the  importance  of  his  newly  acquired  independence.  Our 
modern  history  has  been  the  story  of  the  gradual  emanci- 
pation of  the  individual  from  the  control  of  the  State, 
and  its  product  has  been  an  individualism  in  theory  and 
in  practice  which  represents  the  opposite  extreme  from 
the  political  socialism  of  the  classical  world.  The  prin- 
ciple of  individual  liberty  has  taken  the  place  of  the 
ancient  principle  of  citizenship.  We  have  become  very 
jealous  for  the  rights  of  the  individual,  very  slow  to 
recognise  the  rights  of  the  State.  Its  legitimate  activity 
has  been  reduced  to  a  minimum,  it  has  been  assigned 
a  merely  regulative  or  '  police '  function,  and  has  been 
regarded  as  only  a  kind  of  balance-wheel  of  the  social 
machine.  Not  that  the  individual  has  emancipated  him- 
self from  society.  That  is  only  a  part  of  the  historical 
fact;  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  various  extra-political 
forms  of  social  organisation  have  assumed  functions  for- 
merly discharged  by  the  State.  But  the  result  is  the 
same  in  either  case — namely,  the  narrowing  of  the  sphere 
of  the  State's  legitimate  activity. 

Various  forces  have  conspired  to  bring  about  a  revision 
of  this  modern  theory  of  the  State  in  its  relation  to  the 
individual  and  to  the  other  forms  of  social  organisation. 
The  interests  of  security  have  been  threatened  by  the 
development  of  the  principle  of  individual  liberty  to  its 
extreme  logical  consequences  in  Anarchism  and  Nihilism  ; 
the  very  life,  as  well  as  the  property,  of  the  individual  is 
seen  to  be  endangered  by  the  gradual  disintegration  of  the 
State ;  and  the  strong  arm  of  the  civil  power  has  come 
to  seem  a  welcome  defence  from  the  misery  of  subjection 
to  the  incalculable  caprice  of  '  mob-rule.'  Individualism 
has  almost  reached  its  reductio  ad  dbsurdum  ;  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  mere  particular  has,  here  as  elsewhere,  proved 
itself  to  be  a  principle  of  disintegration.  That  each  shall 
be  allowed  to  live  for  himself  alone,  is  seen  to  be  an 
impossible  and  contradictory  conception.  Experience  has 


The  Social  Life  285 

taught  us  that  the  State  is  the  friend  of  the  individual, 
securing  for  him  that  sacred  sphere  of  individual  liberty 
which,  if  not  thus  secured,  would  soon  enough  be  entered 
and  profaned  by  other  individuals.  The  evils  of  a  non- 
political  or  anti-political  condition  of  atomic  individual- 
ism have  been  brought  home  to  us  by  stern  experiences 
and  by  the  threatenings  of  experiences  even  sterner  and 
more  disastrous. 

The  complications  which  have  resulted  from  industrial 
competition,  the  new  difficulties  of  labour  and  capital 
which  have  come  in  the  train  of  laissez  faire,  have  lent 
their  strength  to  emphasise  the  conviction  that  the  State, 
instead  of  being  the  worst  enemy,  is  the  true  friend  of  the 
individual.  The  doctrine  of  the  non-interference  by  the 
State  with  the  industrial  life  of  the  individual  has  very 
nearly  reached  its  reduction  to  absurdity.  The  evils  of 
unlimited  and  unregulated  competition  have  thrown  into 
clear  relief  the  advantages  of  co-operation ;  the  superior- 
ity of  organised  to  unorganised  activity  has  become  mani- 
fest And  what  more  perfect  form,  it  is  asked,  can  the 
organisation  of  industry  take  than  the  political  ?  Only 
through  the  nationalisation  of  industry,  it  is  felt  in  many 
quarters,  can  we  secure  that  liberty  and  equality  which 
capitalism  has  destroyed ;  only  by  making  the  State  the 
common  guardian,  can  we  hope  for  an  emancipation  from 
that  industrial  slavery  which  now  degrades  and  impover- 
ishes the  lives  of  so  many  of  our  citizens.  Capitalism 
has  given  us  a  plutocracy  which  is  as  baneful  as  any 
political  despotism  the  world  has  seen ;  we  have  escaped 
from  the  serfdom  of  the  feudal  State,  only  to  fall  into  the 
new  serfdom  of  an  unregulated  industrialism. 

The  evils  of  leaving  everything  to  private  enterprise 
force  themselves  upon  our  attention,  especially  in  the 
case  of  what  are  generally  called  public  interests — those 
branches  of  activity  which  obviously  affect  all  alike,  such 
as  the  means  of  communication,  railways,  roads,  and  tele- 
graphs. A  more  careful  reflection,  however,  discovers  a 


286  The  Moral  Life 

certain  public  value  in  all  forms  of  industry,  even  in 
those  which  are  apparently  most  private.  That  mutual 
industrial  dependence  of  each  on  all  and  all  on  each,  in 
which  Plato  found  the  basis  of  the  State,  has  once  more 
come  to  constitute  a  powerful  plea  for  the  necessity  of 
political  organisation  ;  and  we  have  a  new  State-socialism 
which  maintains  that  the  equal  interests  of  each  can  be 
conserved  only  by  the  sacrifice  of  all  private  interests  to 
the  public  interest,  that  only  by  disallowing  the  distinc- 
tion between  meum  and  tuum,  and  indentifying  the  interest 
of  each  with  that  of  all,  can  we  hope  to  establish  the  reign 
of  justice  among  men. 

One  other  force  has  contributed  to  the  change  of  stand- 
point which  we  are  considering,  namely,  the  changed 
conception  of  the  State  itself.  The  progress  towards  in- 
dividual freedom  has  at  the  same  time  been  a  progress 
towards  the  true  form  of  the  State ;  and  as  the  oligar- 
chical and  despotic  have  yielded  to  the  democratic  type  of 
government,  it  has  been  recognised  that  the  State  is  not 
an  alien  force  imposed  upon  the  individual  from  without, 
but  that,  in  their  true  being,  the  State  and  the  individual 
are  identical.  Upon  the  ruins  of  the  feudal  State  the 
individual  has  at  length  built  for  himself  a  new  State,  a 
form  of  government  to  which  he  can  yield  a  willing  obedi- 
ence, because  it  is  the  creation  of  his  own  will,  and,  in 
obeying  it,  he  is  really  obeying  himself.  L'etat  cest  moi. 

Such  causes  as  these  have  led  to  the  return,  in  our  own 
time,  to  the  classical  conception  of  the  State  and  its  func- 
tions, and  to  the  substitution  of  the  question  of  the  rights 
.  of  the  State  for  the  question  of  the  rights  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  tendency  of  contemporary  thought  and  effort 
is,  on  the  whole,  to  extend  the  political  organisation  of 
society,  to  socialise  the  State  or  to  nationalise  society. 
What,  then,  we  are  forced  to  ask,  is  the  ethical  basis  of 
the  State  ?  What,  in  its  principle  and  idea,  is  it  ?  If 
we  can  answer  this  question  of  the  ethical  basis  of  the 
State,  we  shall  not  find  much  difficulty  in  determining, 


The  Social  Life  287 

on  general  lines,  its  ethical  functions,  whether  negative 
or  positive,  whether  in  the  sphere  of  justice  or  in  that  of 
benevolence. 

7.  Is  the  State  an  end-in-itself  ? — From  an  ethical 
standpoint  the  State  must  be  regarded  as  a  means,  not  as 
in  itself  an  end.  The  State  exists  for  the  sake  of  the 
person,  not  the  person  for  the  sake  of  the  State.  The 
ethical  unit  is  the  person  ;  and  the  mission  of  the  State 
is  not  to  supersede  the  person,  but  to  aid  him  in  the 
development  of  his  personality — to  give  him  room  and 
opportunity.  It  exists  for  him,  not  he  for  it;  it  is  his 
sphere,  the  medium  of  his  moral  life.  Here  there  is  no 
real  difference  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern  views 
of  the  State ;  in  principle  they  are  one.  For  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  as  for  ourselves,  the  State  is  the  sphere  of  the 
ethical  life, 'the  true  State  is  the  complement  of  the  true 
individual — his  proper  milieu.  The  Hellenic  State,  it  is 
true,  as  it  actually  existed  and  even  as  Plato  idealised  it, 
contradicts  in  some  measure  our  conception  of  personality ; 
but  it  did  not  contradict  the  Greek  conception  of  person- 
ality. From  our  modern  standpoint,  we  find  it  inadequate 
for  two  reasons.  It  exists  only  for  the  few,  the  many 
exist  for  it :  the  Greek  State  is,  in  our  view,  an  exclusive 
aristocracy,  from  the  privileges  of  whose  citizenship  the 
majority  are  excluded.  Yet,  in  the  last  analysis,  we  find 
that  the  end  for  which  the  State  exists  is  the  person ; 
those  who  exist  merely  for  the  State  are  not  regarded  as 
persons.  If  the  Greeks  could  have  conceived  the  modern 
extension  of  the  idea  of  personality,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
they  would  have  entirely  agreed  with  the  modern  inter- 
pretation of  the  relation  of  the  State  to  the  individual. 
In  the  second  place,  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  with  all  their 
intellectual  and  aesthetic  appreciation,  the  Greeks  had 
not  yet  so  fully  discovered  the  riches  of  the  ethical  life. 
With  our  profounder  appreciation  of  the  significance  of 
personality,  the  merely  instrumental  value  of  the  State 


288  The  Moral  Life 

is  more  clearly  perceived.  But  to  those  who  did  reflect 
upon  its  essential  nature  the  Greek  State  also  was  a 
creation  of  the  ethical  spirit — the  great  ethical  institution. 
The  ancient,  as  well  as  the  modern  State,  based  its  right 
to  the  loyal  service  of  its  citizens  upon  the  plea  that, 
in  serving  it,  the  individual  was  really  serving  himself ; 
that,  in  giving  up  even  his  all  to  it  and  counting  nothing 
his  own,  he  would  receive  from  it  a  return  of  full  and 
joyous  life,  out  of  all  proportion  to  what  he  gave. 

It  is  only  when  we  reflect,  however,  that  we  fully  realise 
this  instrumental  value  of  the  State.  In  our  ordinary 
unreflective  thought  we  are  the  victims  of  the  association 
of  ideas,  and  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  we  con- 
fuse the  means  with  the  end.  We  cannot  rationalise  our 
loyalty  to  the  State,  any  more  than  we  can  rationalise 
our  other  loyalties.  It  is  a  case  of  the  familiar  '  miser'g 
consciousness.'  As  the  miser  comes  to  think  of  money, 
because  of  its  supreme  instrumental  importance,  as  an 
end-iu-itself,  and  to  regard  the  real  ends  of  life  as  only 
means  to  this  fictitious  end,  so  does  the  citizen  come  to 
regard  the  State,  because  of  its  supreme  importance  as 
the  medium  of  the  ethical  life,  as  itself  the  end,  and  him- 
self as  but  its  instrument.  Yet  it  is  the  function  of  a 
medium  to  mediate  and  fulfil,  not  to  negate  and  destroy, 
that  which  it  mediates ;  and  whenever  we  reflect  we  see 
that  the  true  function  of  the  State  is  to  mediate  and  fulfil 
the  personal  life  of  the  citizen.  This  theoretic  insight  is, 
of  course,  not  necessary  to  the  life  of  citizenship  ;  we  may 
most  truly  use  the  State  for  this  highest  end,  when  we 
act  under  the  impulse  of  an  unreflecting  and  uncalculating 
loyalty  to  the  State  itself.  But  the  very  fact  that  we  can 
thus  serve  the  State  without  disloyalty  to  our  highest  self 
implies  that  we  are  not  serving  two  masters,  that  the 
only  master  of  our  loyal  service  is  the  ethical  and  personal 
ideal.  The  ultimate  sanction  and  measure  of  political 
obedience  is  found  in  the  ethical  value  of  the  State  as  the 
vehicle  of  the  personal  life  of  its  citizens. 


The  Social  Life  289 

The  true  relation  of  the  State  to  the  individual  has 
been  obscured  in  modern  discussion  by  the  constant  an- 
tithesis of  '  State-action  '  and  '  individualism.'  The  an- 
tithesis is  inevitable,  so  long  as  we  regard  the  individual 
as  a  mere  individual.  So  regarded,  he  is  like  an  atom  that 
resists  the  intrusion  of  every  other  atom  into  its  place : 
the  mere  individual  is  anti-social  and  anti-political,  and  to 
'  socialise  '  or  '  nationalise  '  him  is  to  negate  and  destroy 
him.  His  life  is  one  of  'go-as-you-please,'  of  absolute 
laissez  faire.  But  the  ethical  unit  is  not  such  a  mere 
atomic  individual ;  it  is  the  person,  who  is  social  and 
political  as  well  as  individual,  and  whose  life  is  forward- 
ed and  fulfilled,  rather  than  negated,  by  the  political  and 
other  forms  of  social  organisation.  To  cut  him  off  from 
others,  to  isolate  him,  would  be  to  maim  and  stunt  his 
life.  That  the  State  has  seemed  to  encroach  upon  the  life 
of  the  ethical  person,  is  largely  due  to  the  constant  use 
of  the  term  '  State-interference.'  In  so  far  as  the  State 
may  be  said  to  interfere,  it  is  only  with  the  individual, 
not  with  the  person ;  and  the  purpose  of  its  interference 
is  always  to  save  the  person  from  the  interference  of  other 
individuals.  Neither  the  State  nor  the  individual,  but 
the  person,  is  the  ultimate  ethical  end  and  unit.  "  The 
State  at  best  is  the  work  of  man's  feeble  hands,  working 
with  unsteady  purpose  ;  the  person,  with  all  his  claims,  is 
the  work  of  God."  1  What  is  called  State-interference 
is  in  reality  the  maintenance  of  this  ethical  possibility, 
the  making  room  for  the  life  of  the  person.  If  all  indi- 
viduals were  left  to  themselves,  they  would  not  leave  each 
other  to  themselves :  individual  would  encroach  upon 
individual,  and  none  would  have  the  full  opportunity  of 
ethical  self-realisation. 

8.  The  ethical  basis  of  the  State. — Just  here  lies 
the  ethical  problem  of  the  basis  of  the  State.  The 
essence  of  the  State  is  sovereignty,  and  the  maintenance 

1  S.  S.  Laurie,  Ethica,  p.  69  (2nd  ed.) 
T 


290  The  Moral  Life 

of  the  sovereign  power  through  coercion  or  control.  In 
order  that  each  may  have  freedom  of  self-development, 
each  must  be  restrained  in  certain  ways.  Is  not  the  process 
ethically  suicidal  ?  Is  not  the  personality  destroyed  in 
the  very  act  of  allowing  it  freedom  of  self-development  ? 
Does  not  State-control  supplant  self-control,  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  State  the  sovereignty  of  personality  ?  Does 
not  the  political  negate  the  ethical  life,  and  the  State 
constrain  the  person  to  act  impersonally  ? 

Two  extreme  answers  are  offered  to  this  question.  The 
first  is  the  answer  of  Anarchism,  the  refusal  of  the  self 
to  acknowledge  any  control  from  without.  This  is  the 
answer  of  pure  individualism,  and  confuses  liberty  with 
license.  The  individual  who  refuses  to  acknowledge  any 
obligations  to  other  individuals,  and  denies  the  right  of 
society  to  control  his  life,  will  not  control  himself.  The 
life  of  individuals  who  refuse  to  become  '  political '  will 
be  a  'state  of  war,'  if  not  so  absolute  as  Hobbes  has 
pictured  it,  yet  deplorable  enough  to  teach  its  possessors 
the  distinction  between  liberty  and  license,  and  to  awaken 
in  them  the  demand  for  that  deliverance  from  the  evils 
of  unrestrained  individualism  which  comes  only  with  the 
strong  arm  of  law  and  government.  The  other  answer 
is  that  of  Despotism,  which  allows  no  freedom  to  the 
individual.  This  would  obviously  de-personalise  man, 
and,  depriving  him  of  his  ethical  prerogative  of  self-gov- 
ernment, would  make  him  the  mere  instrument  or  organ 
of  the  sovereign  power.  Do  these  alternative  extremes 
exhaust  the  possibilities  of  the  case  ?  Is  despotism  the 
only  escape  from  anarchy  ;  can  we  not  have  liberty  with- 
out license  ? 

It  seems  at  first  as  if  there  were  no  third  possibility,  as 
if  the  very  existence  of  the  State,  of  law,  of  government, 
carried  with  it  a  derogation  from  the  personal  life  of  the 
citizen.  So  far  as  its  dominion  extends,  the  State  seems 
to  take  the  management  of  his  life  out  of  the  individual's 
hands,  and  to  manage  it  for  him.  The  will  of  another 


The  Social  Life  291 

seems  to  impose  its  behests  upon  the  individual  will  or 
person,  so  that  he  becomes  its  creature  and  servant ; 
losing  his  self-mastery,  he  seems  to  be  controlled  and 
mastered  by  another  will.  "  It  is  the  specific  function  of 
government  to  impose  upon  the  individual,  in  apparent 
violation  of  his  claim  to  free  self-determination,  an  alien 
will,  an  alien  law.  .  .  .  Preachers  and  teachers  try  to 
instruct  us  as  to  what  course  our  own  highest  reason 
approves,  and  to  persuade  us  to  follow  that  course. 
When  they  have  failed,  government  steps  in  and  says : 
'  Such  and  such  are  the  true  principles  of  justice.  I 
command  you  to  obey  them.  If  you  do  not,  I  will  pun- 
ish you.' "  Autonomy  is  of  the  essence  of  the  moral  life, 
since  that  life  is  essentially  personal.  But  the  very  exist- 
ence of  the  State  seems  to  imply  heteronomy,  or  an  im- 
personal life  in  the  citizens.  The  difficulty  does  not  arise, 
it  is  to  be  observed,  from  the  artificiality  of  the  State,  or 
from  the  natural  egoism  of  human  nature.  Let  us  admit 
that  the  State  itself  is  the  product  and  creation  of  the 
human  spirit,  that  man  is  by  nature  a  political  being,  that 
is,  a  being  whose  life  tends  naturally  to  the  political 
form.  The  question  is,  whether  the  human  spirit  is  not 
imprisoned  in  its  own  creation ;  whether  the  ethical  life 
is  not  lost  in  the  political,  autonomy  in  heteronomy. 

The  first  thing  to  be  noted  is,  that  the  imposition  of  the 
will  of  another  upon  the  individual  does  not  destroy  the 
individual  will.  We  are  apt  to  think  of  the  divine  will 
as  so  imposed,  of  certain  restrictions  as  laid  by  the  very 
nature  of  things  upon  the  life  of  the  individual ;  yet  we  do 
not  find  in  this  any  infraction  of  human  personality  or  will. 
All  that  is  imposed  is  a  certain  form  of  outward  activity ; 
the  inward  movement  of  the  will  is  not  necessarily  touched. 
Thus  all  that  is  enforced  by  the  political  will  or  the 
sovereign  power  is  outward  obedience,  not  the  inward 
obedience  of  the  will  itself.  It  is  for  the  individual  to 
say  whether  he  will  complete  the  outward  surrender  by 

1  F.  M.  Taylor,  The  Right,  of  ike  State  to  Be,  p.  44. 


292  The  Moral  Life 

the  inward  self -surrender.  He  may  yield  either  an  out- 
ward conformity  or  an  inward  conformity ;  the  act  re- 
quired may  be  performed  either  willingly  or  unwillingly. 
The  appeal  is  to  the  will  or  personality,  but  it  is  for  the 
will  to  respond  or  not  to  the  appeal.  What  is  coerced  is 
the  expression  of  the  individuality  in  outward  act :  the 
citizen  is  not  allowed  to  act  as  the  creature  of  ungoverned 
impulse.  Not  that  the  task  of  self-control  is  taken  out 
of  his  hands,  or  his  individuality  mastered  by  another 
will  or  personality  rather  than  by  his  own.  The  mastery 
of  the  State  extends  only  to  the  expression  of  individual 
impulse  in  the  corresponding  outward  activities.  The 
citizen  may  still  cherish  those  impulsive  tendencies  the 
expression  of  which  on  the  field  of  overt  activity  has 
been  restrained,  as  the  criminal  so  often  does  cherish  his 
criminal  instincts  and  habits,  notwithstanding  the  outward 
repression.  The  criminal  may  remain  a  criminal,  though 
the  State  prevents  his  commission  of  further  crime.  He 
cannot  be  mastered  by  another,  but  only  by  himself :  it 
is  for  himself  alone,  by  an  act  of  deliberate  choice,  to  say 
whether  he  will  remain  a  criminal  or  not. 

By  its  punishments  the  State  not  merely  restrains  the 
outward  activity  of  its  citizens ;  it  further,  by  touching 
the  individual  sensibility,  appeals  to  the  person  to  exer- 
cise that  self-restraint  which  is  alone  permanently  effec- 
tive. It  is  for  the  person  to  say  whether  he  will,  or  will 
not,  exercise  such  self-restraint.  Just  in  so  far  as  he 
re-enacts  the  verdict  of  the  State  upon  his  life,  or  recog- 
nises the  justice  of  its  punishment,  just  in  so  far  as  he 
identifies  his  will  with  the  will  that  expresses  itself  in  the 
punishment,  so  that  what  was  the  will  of  another  becomes 
his  own  will, — is  the  result  of  such  treatment  permanently, 
and  thoroughly,  and  in  the  highest  sense  successful.  When 
the  person  has  thus  taken  the  reins  of  the  government 
of  sensibility  into  his  own  hands,  political  coercion  ceases 
to  be  necessary.  The  will  now  expresses  itself  in  the  act, 
the  dualism  of  inward  disposition  and  outward  deed  has 


TJie  Social  Life  293 

disappeared,  and  the  life  is,  even  in  these  particulars,  a 
personal  life. 

Thus  interpreted,  the  coercion  of  the  State  is  seen  to 
be  an  extension  of  the  coercion  of  nature.  Nature  itself 
disallows  certain  lines  of  activity,  does  not  permit  us  to 
follow  every  impulse.  The  organisation  of  life  in  political 
society  implies  a  further  restraint  upon  individual  ten- 
dencies to  activity,  a  certain  further  organisation  or  co- 
ordination of  the  outward  activities.  But  the  organisation 
and  co-ordination  of  the  impulsive  tendencies  to  activity — 
this  is  in  the  hands  not  of  the  State,  but  of  the  individual 
will.  The  right  of  the  State  to  coerce  the  individual,  in 
the  sense  indicated,  is  grounded  in  the  fact  that  it  exists 
for  the  sake  of  the  interests  of  personality.  As  these 
interests  are  superior  in  right  to  the  interests  of  mere 
individual  caprice,  so  are  the  laws  of  the  State  superior 
to  the  instincts  and  impulses  of  the  individual.  The 
State  restrains  the  expression  of  the  individuality,  that 
it  may  vindicate  the  sacred  rights  of  personality  in  each 
individual.  Its  order  is  an  improvement  upon  the  order 
of  nature ;  it  is  more  discriminating,  more  just,  more 
encouraging  to  virtue,  more  discouraging  to  vice.  The 
civil  order  foreshadows  the  moral  order  itself;  it  is  a 
version,  the  best  available  for  the  time  and  place  and 
circumstances,  of  that  order. 

And  although  the  action  of  the  State  seems  at  first 
sight  to  be  merely  coercive,  and  its  will  the  will  of  an- 
other, a  closer  analysis  reveals  the  fundamental  identity 
of  the  State,  in  its  idea  at  least,  with  the  ethical  person. 
The  sovereign  will  represents  the  individual  will,  or  rather 
the  general  will  of  the  individual  citizens.  Here,  in 
the  general  will  of  the  people,  in  the  common  personality 
of  the  citizens,  is  the  true  seat  of  sovereignty.  The  actual 
and  visible  sovereign  or  government  is  representative  of 
this  invisible  sovereign.  The  supreme  power  in  the  State, 
whatever  be  the  form  of  government,  is  therefore,  truly 
regarded,  the  'public  person,'  and,  in  obeying  it,  the 


294  The  Moral  Life 

citizens  are  really  obeying  their  common  personality.  The 
sovereign  power  is  "  the  public  person  vested  with  the 
power  of  the  law,  and  so  is  to  be  considered  as  the  image, 
phantom,  or  representative  of  the  commonwealth  .  .  . 
and  thus  he  has  no  will,  no  power,  but  that  of  the  law."  * 
Obedience  to  the  State  is  obedience  to  the  citizen's  own 
better  self;  and,  like  Socrates,  we  ought  to  be  unwilling 
to  '  disobey  a  better.'  The  apparent  heteronomy  is  really 
autonomy  in  disguise  ;  I  am,  after  all,  sovereign  as  well  as 
subject,  subject  of  my  own  legislation.  The  right  of  the 
State  is  therefore  supreme,  being  the  right  of  personality 
itself.  For  the  individual  to  assert  his  will  against  the 
will  of  the  State,  is  ethically  suicidal.  Socrates  went 
willingly  to  death,  because  he  could  not  live  and  obey 
the  State  rather  than  God;  he  accepted  the  will  of  the 
people  that  he  should  die,  and  saw  in  their  will  the  will 
of  God.  Death  was  for  him  the  only  path  of  obedience 
to  both  the  outward  and  the  inward  '  better.'  The 
individual  may  criticise  the  political  order,  as  an  in- 
adequate version  of  the  moral  order.  He  may  try  to 
improve  upon,  and  reform  it.  He  may  even,  like  Socrates, 
'  obey  God  rather  than  man/  and  refuse  the  inner  obedi- 
ence of  the  will.  But,  where  the  State  keeps  within 
its  proper  function,  he  may  not  openly  violate  its  order. 

9.  The  limit  of  State  action. — If  the  State  should 
step  beyond  its  proper  function,  and  invade,  instead  of 
protecting,  the  sphere  of  personality ;  if  the  actual  State 
should  not  merely  fall  short  of,  but  contradict  the  ideal — 
then  the  right  of  rebellion  belongs  to  the  subject.  If  a 
revolution  has  become  necessary,  and  if  such  revolution 
can  be  accomplished  only  by  rebellion,  rebellion  takes  the 
place  of  obedience  as  the  duty  of  the  citizen.  Even  in 
his  rebellion  he  is  still  a  citizen,  loyal  to  the  law  and 
constitution  of  the  ideal  State  which  he  seeks  by  his 
action  to  realise. 

1  Locke,  Treatise  of  Civil  Government,  bk.  ii.  ch.  xiii. 


The  Social  Life  295 

This  contradiction  may  occur  in  either  of  two  ways. 
In  the  first  place,  the  action  of  the  sovereign  power  may 
not  be  representative  or  '  public  ' :  it  may  act  as  a  private 
individual,  or  body  of  individuals.  As  Locke  again  says  : 
"  When  he  quits  this  public  representation,  this  public 
will,  and  acts  by  his  own  private  will,  he  degrades  him- 
self, and  is  but  a  single  private  person  without  power,  and 
without  will  that  has  any  right  to  obedience — the  members 
owing  no  obedience  but  to  the  public  will  of  the  society." 
The  true  sovereign  must  count  nothing  '  his  own,'  must 
have  no  private  interests  in  his.  public  acts :  his  interests 
must  be  those  of  the  people,  and  their  will  his.  If  he  acts 
otherwise,  asserting  his  own  private  will,  and  subordinat- 
ing the  good  of  the  citizens  to  his  own  individual  good,  he 
thereby  uncrowns  himself,  and  abnegates  his  sovereignty. 
Then  comes  the  time  for  the  exercise  of  '  the  supreme 
power  that  remains  still  in  the  people/  The  necessity  of 
the  English  and  the  French  Eevolution,  for  example,  lay 
in  the  fact  that  the  actual  State  contradicted  the  ideal, 
seeking  to  destroy  those  rights  of  personality  of  which 
it  ought  to  have  been  the  custodian,  and  before  which  it 
was  called  to  give  an  account  of  its  stewardship.  At 
such  a  time  the  common  personality,  in  whose  interest 
the  State  exists,  must  step  forth,  assert  itself  against  the 
so-called  '  State,'  and,  condemning  the  actual,  give  birth  to 
one  that  shall  be  true  to  its  own  idea,  that  shall  help  and 
not  hinder  its  citizens  in  their  life  of  self-realisation.  The 
power  returns  to  its  source,  the  general  will,  which  is  thus 
forced  to  find  for  itself  a  new  and  more  adequate  expression. 

This  brings  us  to  the  second  form  of  the  contradiction 
between  the  actual  and  the  ideal  State.  When  the  present 
formulation  of  the  general  will  has  become  inadequate,  it 
must  be  re-formulated ;  and  this  re-formulation  of  its  will 
by  the  people  may  mean  revolution  as  well  as  reformation. 
Such  a  criticism  and  modification  of  the  State  is  indeed 
always  going  on,  public  opinion  is  always  more  or  less 
active  and  more  or  less  articulate ;  and  it  is  the  function 


296  The  Moral  Life 

of  the  statesman  to  interpret,  as  well  as  to  guide  and  form, 
this  public  opinion.  As  long  as  there  is  harmony  between 
the  general  will  and  the  will  of  the  government,  as  long 
as  the  government  is  truly  representative  of  the  governed, 
so  long  the  State  exists  and  prospers.  As  soon  as  there  is 
discord,  and  the  government  ceases  to  represent  the  general 
will,  so  soon  does  a  new  delegation  of  sovereignty  become 
necessary.  "  Emperors,  kings,  councils,  and  parliaments, 
or  any  combinations  of  them,  are  only  the  temporary 
representatives  of  something  that  is  greater  than  they." 1 
"  The  acts  of  the  government  in  every  country  which  is 
not  on  the  verge  of  a  revolution  are  not  the  acts  of  a 
minority  of  individuals,  but  the  acts  of  the  uncrowned  and 
invisible  sovereign,  the  spirit  of  the  nation  itself." 2  In 
the  very  indeterminateness  of  the  general  will ;  in  the 
fact  that  no  one  of  its  determinations  or  definitions  of  itself 
is  final,  that  no  actualisation  of  it  exhausts  its  potentiality 
or  fixes  it  in  a  rigid  and  unchanging  form,  that,  like  an 
organism,  it  grows,  and  in  its  growth  is  capable  of  adapt- 
ing itself  always  to  its  new  conditions,  that,  like  the  indi- 
vidual will,  it  learns  by  experience  and  allows  its  past 
to  determine  its  present, — lie  the  undying  strength  and 
vitality  of  that  invisible  State  which  persists  through  all 
the  changing  forms  of  its  visible  manifestation. 

10.  The  ethical  functions  of  the  State  :  (a)  justice. 
— The  State,  being  the  medium  of  the  ethical  life  of  the 
individual,  has  two  ethical  functions :  (1)  the  negative 
function  of  securing  to  the  individual  the  opportunity  of 
self-realisation,  by  protecting  him  from  the  encroachments 
of  other  individuals  or  of  non-political  forms  of  society 
— the  function  of  justice ;  (2)  the  positive  improvement 
of  the  conditions  of  the  ethical  life  for  each  of  its  citi- 
zens— the  function  of  benevolence.  In  the  exercise  of 
the  former  function,  the  State  cares  for  the  interests  of 
'being,'  in  the  exercise  of  the  latter  it  cares  for  the 

1  D.  G.  Ritchie,  Principles  of  State  Interference,  p.  69.  ~  Hid.,  p.  74. 


The  Social  Life  297 

interests  of  '  well-being ' ;  and  as  the  interests  of  being  or 
security  precede  in  imperativeness  those  of  well-being  or 
prosperity,  so  is  the  political  duty  of  justice  prior  to  that 
of  benevolence.  In  the  case  of  the  State,  as  in  that  of  the 
individual,  however,  the  one  duty  passes  imperceptibly  into 
the  other,  and  benevolence  is  seen  to  be  only  the  higher 
justice.  This  relation  of  the  positive  to  the  negative 
function  suggests — what  a  closer  consideration  makes 
very  plain — that  there  is  no  logical  basis  for  the  limita- 
tion of  State-action  to  justice,  and  that  those  who  would 
thus  limit  it  are  seeking  artificially  to  arrest  the  life  of 
the  State  at  the  stage  of  what  we  may  call  the  lower 
and  imperfect  justice. 

Even  at  this  stage  the  activity  of  the  State  is,  in  its 
essence,  the  same  as  it  is  at  the  higher  stages  of  that 
activity.  Even  here  the  function  is  not  a  mere  police 
one ;  even  here  the  State  '  interferes '  with  the  indi- 
vidual. To  protect  the  individual  from  the  aggression  of 
other  individuals  and  of  society,  the  State  must  interfere 
with  the  individual,  and  be  in  some  considerable  measure 
'  aggressive.'  Already  the  imagined  sphere  of  sheer  inde- 
pendent and  private  individuality  has  been  penetrated, 
and  the  right  of  the  State  to  act  within  that  sphere 
established.  While  it  is  true  that  the  preservation  of  the 
integrity  of  the  individual  life  implies  a  large  measure  of 
freedom  from  government  control,  it  is  also  true  that  the 
only  way  to  secure  such  freedom  for  the  individual  is 
by  a  large  measure  of  such  control.  If  other  individuals 
and  non-political  society  are  not  to  encroach  upon  the 
individual  and  destroy  his  freedom,  the  State  must  be 
allowed  to  encroach  and  set  up  its  rule  within  the  life 
of  the  individual.  The  tyranny  of  the  individual  and 
the  tyranny  of  unofficial  public  opinion  are  incomparably 
worse  than  what  some  are  pleased  to  call  the  tyranny  of 
the  State.  The  justification  of  State-interference  in  all 
its  forms  is,  as  we  have  seen,  that  it  is  exercised  in  the 
interest  of  individual  freedom. 


298  The  Moral  Life 

The  fundamental  limitation,  as  well  as  the  fundamental 
vindication,  of  State-action  is  found  in  its  ethical  basis. 
Since  the  State  exists  as  the  medium  of  personal  life,  the 
limit  of  its  action  is  reached  at  the  point  where  it  begins 
to  encroach  upon  and  negate  the  strictly  personal  life  of 
the  citizen.  The  State  must  maintain  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual, not  simply  annex  and  take  possession  of  it  for 
itself ;  it  must  not  abolish,  but  establish,  the  life  of  the 
individual.  If  the  individual  apart  from  the  State  is  not 
a  moral  individual,  a  State  in  which  the  individual  is  lost 
is  no  true  State.  The  best  State  is  that  in  whose  citizen- 
ship the  individual  most  fully  lives  his  own  individual  life, 
that  which  includes,  and  integrates  in  a  higher  and  richer 
unity,  the  greatest  number  of  individual  elements,  and, 
like  an  organism,  incorporates  in  its  own  total  life  the 
lives  of  its  several  members.  The  simplest  State  is  likely 
to  be  the  worst  rather  than  the  best,  since  in  the  best  there 
must  be  room  for  indefinite  differentiation  without  the 
loss  of  the  State's  integrity.  The  true  unity  is,  here  as 
elsewhere,  unity  in  difference.  The  true  political  identity 
is  that  which,  like  the  identity  of  the  organism,  conceals 
itself  in  endless  differentiation  of  structure  and  function. 
If  the  idea  of  the  State  is  not  to  be  contradicted,  room 
must  be  found  in  it  for  the  moral  individual,  in  all  the 
wealth  of  his  individual  possibilities.  Does  not  the  State 
exist  to  provide  the  true  sphere  for  the  actualisation  of 
these  possibilities  ? 

Take,  for  example,  the  question  of  the  attitude  of  the 
State  to  individual  property.  From  of  old  the  spell  of 
the  simple  or  communistic  State  has  fascinated  the 
imagination  of  political  theorists.  It  has  seemed  self- 
evident  that  community  of  interest  implies  community  of 
property ;  that,  in  the  ideal  State,  the  citizens  shall  have 
all  things  in  common,  and  none  shall  call  anything  his  own. 
For  must  not  private  property  create  private  interests, 
and  must  not  private  interests  undermine  the  public  in- 
terest ?  What  guarantee,  then,  for  unity  and  identity  of 


The  Social  Life  299 

interest,  but  the  abolition  of  private  interests  ?  Yet,  since 
these  private  interests  have  their  roots  in  the  very  being  of 
the  individual,  they  cannot  be  eradicated,  and  must  always 
cause  disaffection  to  spring  up  towards  the  State  which 
seeks  to  uproot  them.  The  true  function  of  the  State 
is  surely  to  act  as  the  custodian  and  interpreter  of  this,  as 
of  all  other  aspects  of  the  individual  life.  The  interests 
of  property  are  part  of  the  interests  of  security.  The 
State  must  not  merely  secure  to  the  individual  the  oppor- 
tunity of  exercising  his  powers  of  activity ;  it  must  also 
secure  to  him  the  fruits  of  such  activity,  and  the  larger 
opportunity  which  comes  with  the  possession  of  these 
fruits.  In  other  words,  the  State  is  the  custodian  not 
only  of  the  '  personal,'  but  also  of  the  '  real,'  rights  of 
the  individual.  For  these  real  rights  or  rights  of  prop- 
erty are  essentially,  as  Hegel  shows,  personal  rights,  rights 
of  the  person :  property  is  the  expression  of  personality. 
My  will  sets  its  stamp  upon  the  thing  or  the  animal,  and 
makes  it  mine — makes  it,  as  it  were,  part  of  me.  Owner- 
ship is  founded  deep  in  the  nature  of  man  as  an  ethical 
being,  and  the  only  absolute  limit  to  it  is  the  ethical  limit 
of  personality  itself.  A  person  cannot  strictly  own  another 
person ;  he  may  buy  his  services,  but  not  himself.  The 
essence  of  slavery  is  the  assertion  of  this  impossible  and 
suicidal  claim  to  ownership  of  the  man  in  his  entire  per- 
sonality, in  the  whole  range  of  his  activities ;  which  is  to 
de-personalise  the  man,  and  to  treat  him  as  if  he  were 
only  an  animal  or  a  thing.  But  whatever  it  be  upon 
which  I  have  placed  the  stamp  of  my  will,  into  which  I 
have  put  my  selfhood, — that  is  mine.  Eights  of  property 
are  essentially,  like  all  rights,  personal — the  creation  and 
expression  of  personality. 

The  State  is  the  custodian  and  interpreter  of  these 
rights ;  it  does  not  create,  and  cannot  destroy  them. 
Its  function  is  to  recognise,  to  establish,  and  to  formulate 
them  in  law ;  its  law  is  only  a  version  of  moral  law.  It 
is  for  the  State  to  define  the  rights  of  property,  to  for- 


300  The  Moral  Life 

mulate  these  rights ;  and  the  appeal,  in  cases  of  dispute, 
is  to  the  State  through  its  courts  of  justice.  But  the 
State,  through  its  courts,  seeks  to  dispense  that  moral 
justice  to  which  the  legal  is  only  an  approximation.  It 
recognises  rights  in  equity,  as  well  as  in  justice,  and  has 
its  courts  to  administer  them.  And  while  the  power  of 
the  State  is  here  also,  by  its  very  nature,  sovereign,  yet 
the  seat  of  sovereignty  is  really  in  the  general  will  of 
the  citizens ;  and  as  soon  as  the  general  will  has  defi- 
nitely decided  that  the  civil  version  of  the  moral  law 
of  property  is  inadequate,  and  that  an  improved  version 
is  possible,  the  amendment  will  be  made. 

Eights  of  property,  again,  give  rise  to  rights  of  contract. 
Contract  is  not  the  source  of  property,  still  less  the  source 
of  the  State  itself;  but,  the  State  and  property  having 
been  created,  contract,  with  its  new  rights  (which  are 
but  extensions  of  the  old),  ensues.  I  have  control  of 
my  property  :  it  is  mine,  it  is  part  of  n^self.  My  freedom 
has  entered  into  it,  and  characterises  it.  The  disposition 
of  it  is  in  my  own  hands ;  I  have  the  right  of  use  and 
exchange,  as  well  as  of  possession.  This  right  also  the 
State  must  establish  and  interpret,  not  destroy.  Yet  it 
is  often  argued  that,  as  the  State  ought  to  be  the  sole 
owner,  so  it  ought  to  be  the  sole  disposer  of  property ; 
that,  here  again,  the  individual  life,  instead  of  being 
maintained  and  regulated,  should  be  simply  absorbed  by 
the  State. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that,  in  thus  limiting  the  functions 
of  the  State,  we  are  not  maintaining  '  individualism '  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  that  term.  The  individual  for  whose 
sake  the  State  exists  is  the  moral  individual  or  the 
person,  and  his  security  from  the  encroachment  of  other 
individuals  implies  a  large  measure  of  State  control  or 
interference.  The  State  must  not  only  establish  the  right 
of  the  individual  to  '  his  own '  and  to  the  disposition  of 
his  own ;  it  must  also  correct  the  abuses  which  are 
apt  to  occur  in  these  spheres  of  the  individual  life.  For 


The  Social  Life  301 

it  is  as  true  in  the  life  of  ownership  as  in  other  spheres 
that  "  no  man  liveth  to  himself."  The  individual  cannot 
isolate  himself,  even  in  these  particulars  of  his  conduct ; 
in  them  also  his  life  has  a  public  as  well  as  a  private 
value.  And  if  great  possession,  instead  of  being  used  as 
a  great  ethical  opportunity,  becomes  an  instrument  of 
moral  evil  to  other  citizens,  it  is  for  the  State  to  inter- 
vene and,  it  may  be,  to  interdict.  The  rule  is  the  con- 
stant one  of  guarding  the  security  of  personal  rights.  No 
criterion  of  amount  can  be  laid  down  a  priori,  certainly 
no  rule  of  abstract  equality.  But,  where  the  individual 
owner  abuses  his  rights  as  a  proprietor,  that  is,  where 
he  so  uses  them  as  to  injure  the  free  and  fruitful  self- 
development  of  others,  the  State  may  intervene.  It  is  a 
case  of  punishment,  and  does  not  amount  to  a  violation 
of  the  rights  of  personality.  It  is  the  caprice  of  the  man's 
individuality — his  greed,  his  laziness,  his  selfish  indiffer- 
ence— that  is  punished  (and  the  life  of  ownership  is  as 
liable  to  such  caprice  as  any  other  life),  not  the  essential 
and  inviolable  life  of  the  person.  The  State  may  even 
generalise  from  its  experience  of  the  actual  working  of 
private  ownership  in  the  case  of  particular  commodities 
and  industries,  of  land,  or  of  public  services,  and  decide 
to  nationalise  them.  The  sphere  of  private  ownership 
may  thus  be  limited  by  the  State,  on  the  principle  that 
the  free  and  equal  self -development  of  all  its  citizens  is 
the  treasure  in  its  keeping.  In  comparison  with  this, 
the  selfish  satisfaction  of  the  individual  is  of  no  account, 
and  must  be  sacrificed.  But  the  theory  of  Communism 
or  State-socialism — that  the  State  shall  be  the  sole  pro- 
prietor— is  suicidal,  destroying  as  it  does  those  very  rights 
of  personality  which  are  the  basis  of  the  rights  of  property, 
and  in  the  absence  or  annihilation  of  which  the  State 
itself,  as  an  ethical  institution,  would  have  no  existence, 
or  at  least  no  raison  d'etre. 

A  further  limitation  is  set  to  the  action  of  the  State, 
by  the  principle  of  the  existence  and  freedom  of  other 


302  The  Moral  Life 

social  institutions  within  it.  The  completely  commun- 
istic or  socialistic  State  would  absorb  into  itself,  along 
with  the  individual,  all  extra-political  forms  of  associ- 
ation, and  would  identify  society  with  the  State.  Now 
it  is  obvious  that  no  form  of  social  organisation  can  be, 
in  an  absolute  sense,  extra-political,  inasmuch  as  these 
minor  societies  must  all  alike  be  contained  within  the 
larger  society  which  we  call  the  State.  They,  like  the 
individual,  depend  upon  the  State  for  their  very  existence. 
Yet  each  of  these  minor  societies  has  a  sphere  of  its  own 
which  the  State  preserves  from  invasion  by  any  of  the 
others,  and  which  the  State  itself  must  not  invade.  Each 
must  be  allowed  to  exercise  its  own  peculiar  functions, 
with  due  regard  to  the  functions,  equally  rightful,  of  the 
others.  Even  the  State  must  not  usurp  the  functions  of 
any  other  ethical  institution.  It  has  its  genius,  they  have 
theirs  ;  and,  as  they  recognise  its  rights,  it  must  recognise 
theirs  also.  The  most  important  of  these  institutions 
within  the  State  are  the  Family  and  the  Church.  The 
function  of  the  State  is  not  paternal,  it  does  not  stand  in 
loco  parentis  to  the  citizen  ;  nor  is  its  function  ecclesiasti- 
cal, Church  and  State  are  not  to  be  identified.  The  State 
is  the  guardian  of  these  institutions;  but  the  very  notion  of 
such  guardianship  is  that  the  institution  which  is  guarded 
shall  be  maintained  in  its  integrity,  and  allowed  to  fulfil 
its  own  proper  work  and  mission  for  mankind.  In  the 
exercise  of  this  guardianship,  the  State  may  be  called  upon 
to  act  vicariously  for  the  institutions  under  its  care ;  but 
its  further  duty  must  always  be,  so  to  improve  the  con- 
ditions of  institutional  life,  that  that  life  shall  pursue  its 
own  true  course  without  interference  or  assistance  from 
without.  Institutions,  like  individuals,  must  be  helped 
to  help  themselves.  For  example,  the  State  may  be  called 
upon  not  merely  to  superintend  the  institution  of  the 
Family,  but  to  discharge  duties  which,  in  an  ideal  con- 
dition of  things,  would  be  performed  by  the  parent.  The 
State  may  also  not  merely  recognise  the  right  of  ecclesi- 


TJie  Social  Life  303 

astical  association,  but  may  even  establish  and  endow  an 
ecclesiastical  society.  All  that  is  ethically  imperative  is 
that,  within  the  Family  and  within  the  Church,  freedom 
of  initiation  and  self-development  be  allowed ;  that  each 
institution  be  permitted  to  work  out  its  own  career,  and 
to  realise  its  own  peculiar  genius.  On  the  other  hand, 
neither  the  Family  nor  the  Church  must  be  allowed  to 
encroach  upon  the  proper  functions  of  the  State ;  here 
the  State  must  defend  its  own  prerogative.  In  general, 
the  political,  the  domestic,  and  the  ecclesiastical  functions 
must  be  kept  separate ;  since,  however  closely  they  may 
intertwine,  each  deals  with  a  distinct  aspect  of  human 
life. 

The  final  principle  of  limitation — that  which  really 
underlies  all  the  others  mentioned  —  is  the  principle 
of  individual  freedom.  The  State  may  not  use  the  in- 
dividual as  its  mere  instrument  or  organ.  In  a  sense, 
and  up  to  a  certain  point,  it  may  and  must  do  so ;  only 
it  must  not  appropriate,  or  altogether  nationalise  him. 
The  industrial  State,  for  instance,  of  many  Socialists, 
would  reduce  the  individual  to  a  mere  crank  in  the  social 
or  political  machine.  But  if  we  thus  destroy  the  proper 
life  of  the  individual  for  himself,  we  undo  the  very  work 
we  are  trying  to  do.  Ultimately  the  State  exists  for  the 
individual,  and  it  is  only  because  the  individual — some 
individual  —  gets  back,  with  the  interest  of  an  added 
fulness  and  joy  in  life,  what  he  has  given  to  the  State 
in  loyal  service,  that  the  service  is  ethically  justified. 
The  State  has  a  tremendous  and  indefinite  claim  upon 
the  citizen,  but  that  claim  is  only  the  reflection  of  the 
individual's  claim  upon  the  State.  The  Socialism  which 
neglects  the  individual  side  of  this  claim  is  no  less  un- 
sound than  the  Anarchism  which  neglects  its  social  side. 
The  measure  of  the  service  which  the  State  can  demand 
of  the  individual  is  found  in  his  manhood.  If  the  in- 
dividual is  not  an  independent  unit,  neither  is  he  a  mere 
instrument  for  the  production  of  national  wealth.  The 


304  TJie  Moral  Life 

true  wealth  or  well-being  of  the  nation  lies  in  the  well- 
being  of  its  individual  citizens ;  and  while  this  universal 
well-being  can  be  reached  only  through  that  partial 
sacrifice  of  individual  well-being  which  is  implied  in  the 
discharge  by  the  individual  of  the  functions  demanded 
by  the  State  as  a  whole,  the  limit  to  such  a  demand  is 
found  in  the  right  of  the  individual  to  the  enjoyment  of 
a  return  for  his  service  in  a  higher  and  fuller  capacity  of 
life.  In  the  language  of  political  economy,  the  individual 
is  a  consumer  as  well  as  a  producer;  and  even  if,  in 
his  latter  capacity,  he  were  exploited  by  the  State,  he 
would  still,  in  the  former,  have  claims  as  an  individual. 
It  is  probably  because  the  emphasis  is  placed  on  the 
production,  and  the  consumption  is  so  largely  ignored, 
that  the  communistic  State  proves  so  fascinating  to  many. 
But,  in  truth,  regard  must  be  had  to  the  individual  life 
in  both  these  aspects,  if  it  is  not  to  suffer  in  both.  The 
State,  in  short,  must  not  demand  the  entire  man ;  to  do 
so  were  to  destroy  its  own  idea.  The  most  perfect  State 
will  be  that  in  which  there  is  least  repression,  and 
most  encouragement  and  development,  of  the  free  life 
of  a  full  individuality  in  all  the  citizens. 

11.  (b)  Benevolence. — Within  these  ethical  limits  the 
State  may  do  anything,  and  need  count  nothing  human 
foreign  to  its  province.  The  State  has  positive,  as  well 
as  negative,  functions ;  it  may  set  itself  to  effect  the 
higher  as  well  as  the  lower,  the  spiritual  as  well  as  the 
material,  welfare  of  its  citizens.  There  is,  of  course,  no 
special  virtue  in  the  fact  that  a  thing  is  done  by  the 
State,  rather  than  by  some  other  agency.  The  reason 
for  the  exercise  of  the  higher  functions  by  the  State  is 
the  practical  one,  that  the  action  of  the  State  is  most 
efficient,  and  on  the  largest  scale.  The  State,  for  ex- 
ample, can  care  for  the  education  of  its  citizens,  as  no 
individual  or  group  of  individuals  can  care  for  it.  "We 
must  remember  also  that  the  action  of  the  State  may  be 


The  Social  Life  305 

indirect  as  well  as  direct,  local  as  well  as  central.  "What 
functions  the  State  should  take  upon  itself  in  any  par- 
ticular country,  how  far  it  should  go  in  discharging  them, 
and  how  long  it  should  continue  to  do  so, — these  are 
questions  of  practical  politics,  to  be  answered  by  the 
statesman,  and  not  by  the  political  philosopher.  All 
that  ethics,  in  particular,  can  do  is  to  formulate  the 
ethical  principles  of  State  action  in  general. 

How  the  negative  function  of  the  State  passes  into  the 
positive,  its  activities  of  justice  into  those  of  benevolence, 
may  be  indicated  in  one  or  two  of  its  chief  aspects.  The 
protection  of  the  individual,  or  rather  of  the  commu- 
nity of  individuals,  from  the  evils  of  ignorance  implies, 
especially  in  a  democracy,  the  education  of  the  citizens. 
Compulsory,  and  even,  under  certain  conditions,  free  edu- 
cation thus  becomes  a  necessity  of  political  well-being ; 
and  once  the  process  of  education  has  been  undertaken 
by  the  State,  it  is  difficult  to  say  where  it  should  be  aban- 
doned. For  the  higher  education,  even  though  limited 
directly  to  the  few,  penetrates,  perhaps  no  less  effectively 
than  the  lower,  the  mass  of  the  citizens,  and  affects  the 
common  weal.  Every  loyal  citizen  may  well,  with 
John  Knox,  thank  God  for  "  another  scholar  in  the 
land."  Again,  the  permanent  and  thoroughgoing  preven- 
tion of  crime  implies  a  concern  for  the  positive  ethical 
well-being  of  the  criminal.  Punishment,  in  the  older 
sense,  is  now  seen  to  be  a  very  inadequate  method  of 
social  protection.  The  only  way  in  which  the  State  can 
permanently  deter  the  criminal  from  crime  is  by  under- 
taking his  education  as  a  moral  being,  and  providing  for 
him,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  stimulus  to  goodness.  Only 
in  so  far  as  punishment  is  reformative  and  educative,  is 
it  truly  deterrent.  Further  than  this,  and  still  in  the 
interests  of  security,  as  well  as  those  of  well-being,  the 
State  must  remove  as  far  as  possible  the  stimulus  to 
crime  that  comes  from  extreme  poverty;  it  must  so  far 
equalise  the  conditions  of  industrial  life  as  to  secure  to 

u 


306  The  Moral  Life 

each  citizen  the  opportunity  of  earning  an  honest  liveli- 
hood. And  if  it  would  prevent  the  general  loss  which 
comes  from  the  existence  of  a  pauper  class,  the  State 
must  take  measures  to  secure  the  individual  against  the 
risk  of  becoming  a  burden  to  society ;  by  taking  upon 
itself  the  burden  of  providing  him  with  the  opportun- 
ity of  self-maintenance,  it  will  save  itself  from  the  later 
and  heavier  burden  of  maintaining  him.  Since,  more- 
over, the  progress  of  society  must  often  mean  a  temporary 
injustice  to  the  individual,  the  State  must,  again  in  its 
own  permanent  interest,  provide  some  remedy  for  this 
injustice.  Social  progress  costs  much,  and  it  is  for  the 
State  to  reckon  up  these  costs  of  progress,  and,  as  far  as 
possible,  to  make  them  good  to  its  citizens.1  The  State 
must  seek  to  maintain  the  equilibrium  which  progress 
seems  always  temporarily  to  disturb. 

When,  however,  we  realise  the  fuller  meaning  of  the 
State  as  an  ethical  institution,  nay,  as  the  all-containing 
ethical  institution,  we  see  that  it  must  go  further  than 
that  indirect  or  secondary  benevolence  which  is  implied 
in  the  lower  or  ordinary  justice.  The  sphere  of  the 
higher  justice,  or  that  of  true  benevolence,  is  part  of  the 
sphere  of  the  State's  legitimate  activity.  This  higher 
justice  means  that  all  be  provided  with  the  full  oppor- 
tunity of  the  ethical  life  which  is  so  apt,  even  in  our 
own  civilisation,  to  be  open  only  to  the  few.  It  is 
for  the  State  to  emancipate  from  the  slavery  of  social 
conditions  the  toiling  masses  of  society,  to  endow  those 
who  are  citizens  only  in  name  with  a  real  ethical  citizen- 
ship, to  make  those  who  have  neither  part  nor  lot  in  the 
true  life  of  humanity  heirs  of  its  wealth  and  partakers  in 
its  conquests.  The  development  of  our  modern  industrial 
system  has  given  us  back  the  essential  evils  of  ancient 
slavery  and  of  feudal  serfdom  in  a  new  and,  in  many 

1  Cf.  Professor  H.  C.  Adams's  suggestive  article,  entitled  "An  Inter- 
pretation of  the  Social  Movements  of  our  Time"  (International  Journal  of 
Ethics,  vol.  ii.  p.  32). 


The  Social  Life  307 

ways,  an  aggravated  form.  To  the  '  working  classes,'  to 
the  '  hands,'  into  which  machinery  and  free  competition 
have  transformed  the  masses  of  our  modern  population — 
to  these  the  State  must  give  not  merely  the  political  fran- 
chise, but  the  ethical  franchise  of  a  complete  and  worthy 
human  life.  As  the  custodian  of  the  moral  interests,  and 
not  merely  of  the  material  interests  of  its  citizens,  the 
State  must  see  that  the  former  are  not  sacrificed  to  the 
latter.  The  political  sphere,  being  the  ethical  sphere, 
includes  the  industrial,  as  it  includes  all  others ;  and 
while  the  industrial  life  ought  to  be  allowed  to  follow 
its  own  economic  laws,  in  so  far  as  such  independence 
is  consistent  with  ethical  well-being,  it  is  for  the  State 
to  co-ordinate  the  industrial  with  the  ethical  life.  In- 
dustry is  an  ethical  activity,  and  must  be  regulated  by 
ethical  as  well  as  by  economic  law :  there  must  be  no 
schism  in  the  body  politic.  If  men  were  mere  brute 
agents,  their  lives  as  producers  and  consumers  of  wealth 
would,  no  doubt,  be  subject  to  economic  law  as  undevi- 
ating  as  the  law  of  nature ;  but  the  fact  that,  as  men, 
they  are  in  all  their  activity  moral  beings,  implies  that 
even  the  economic  world  must  come  under  the  higher 
regulation  of  moral  law.  The  State  alone  can  enforce 
this  higher  regulation ;  and  the  advance  from  the  theory 
of  absolutely  free  competition  or  laissez  faire  to  that  of 
industrial  co-operation  and  organisation  is  bringing  us 
to  the  recognition  of  the  ethical  function  of  the  State 
in  the  economic  sphere.  It  is  for  the  State  to  substitute 
for  the  rnob-rule  of  unethical  economic  forces  the  steady 
rational  control  of  ethical  insight.  In  the  words  of 
Professor  Adams,  in  the  article  already  quoted :  "  Unless 
some  way  be  discovered  by  which  the  deep  ethical  pur- 
pose of  society  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  indus- 
trial questions,  our  magnificent  material  civilisation  will 
crumble  to  ashes  in  our  hands.  ...  A  peace  born  of 
justice  can  never  be  realised  by  balancing  brute  force 
against  brute  force.  .  .  .  The  ethical  sense  of  society 


308  The  Moral  Life 

must  be  brought  to  bear  in  settling  business  affairs.  .  .  . 
Above  the  interest  of  the  contending  parties  stands  the 
interest  of  the  public,  of  which  the  State  is  the  natural 
guardian ;  and  one  way  to  realise  the  ethical  purpose 
of  society  in  business  affairs  is,  by  means  of  legislation, 
to  bring  the  ethical  sense  of  society  to  bear  on  business 
affairs."  This  means,  of  course,  State-interference  with 
the  industrial  life  of  society ;  by  such  interference,  how- 
ever, "  society  is  not  deprived  of  the  advantages  of  com- 
petition, but  the  plane  of  competition  is  adjusted  to  the 
moral  sense  of  the  community."1 

This  maintenance  by  the  State  of  the  true  relation  of 
economic  to  ethical  good,  of  material  to  spiritual  well- 
being,  may  take  many  forms.  The  ultimate  measure  of 
well-being  having  been  found  in  the  perfection  of  the 
development  of  the  total  nature  of  the  individual,  his 
instrumental  value  as  a  producer  of  wealth  will  be  sub- 
ordinated to  his  essential  and  independent  worth  as  a 
moral  being;  regard  to  the  external  and  industrial  cri- 
terion will  be  checked  by  regard  to  the  internal  and 
ethical.  In  this  ultimate  relation,  all  men  will  be  seen  to 
be  equal ;  here,  in  the  ethical  sphere,  will  be  found  the 
true  democracy.  Class  interests  do  not  exist  here ;  the 
capitalist  and  the  day-labourer  stand  here  on  the  same 
level,  and  the  true  State  will  regard  the  interests  of  each 
alike.  And  if,  even  here,  the  highest  well-being  of  all 
implies  a  certain  sacrifice  of  well-being  on  the  part  of 
the  individual,  the  State  will  see  that  such  sacrifice  does 
not  go  too  far,  that  no  citizen  loses  the  reality  of  citizen- 
ship and  sinks  to  the  status  of  a  slave  or  of  a  mere  in- 
strument in  the  industrial  machine,  that  for  each  there 
is  reserved  a  sufficient  sphere  of  complete  ethical  living. 
If  the  preservation  and  development  of  the  highest  man- 
hood of  its  citizens  is  the  supreme  duty  of  the  State  and 
its  ultimate  raison  d'etre,  an  obvious  case  of  this  duty 
is  the  securing  of  a  certain  amount  of  leisure  for  all  its 

1  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  ii.  pp.  47-48. 


The  Social  Life  309 

citizens.  The  lowest  classes — those  which  are  technically 
called  the  '  working  classes ' — need  this  leisure  far  more 
clamantly  than  the  middle  and  higher  classes.  Their 
work  is  a  far  harder  tyrant  than  the  work  of  the  latter, 
since  it  calls  forth  so  much  less  of  their  true  manhood ; 
they  are  controlled  far  more  largely  by  the  needs  of 
others  than  by  their  own.  Yet  they  too  have  needs  of 
their  own,  not  less  real  and  not  less  urgent  than  their 
'  betters ' ;  they  too  have  a  manhood  to  develop,  a  moral 
inheritance  to  appropriate.  How  much  more  need  have 
they  of  leisure  to  be  with  themselves,  and  to  attend  to 
their  '  proper  business  '  ?  Such  a  shortening  of  the  hours 
of  labour,  such  an  extension  of  the  area  of  the  free  indi- 
vidual life,  as  shall  secure  for  them  also  their  peculiar 
ethical  opportunity — this  surely  is  the  duty  of  the  State 
as  the  custodian  of  the  higher  justice. 

The  case  of  the  regulation  of  the  industrial  life  of  the 
community  offers  perhaps  the  best  example  of  the  via 
media  in  which  the  true  view  of  the  ethical  function  of 
the  State  is  to  be  found.  The  socialistic  extreme  would 
place  all  industrial  activities  in  the  hands  of  the  State, 
and  would  thus  endanger,  if  not  destroy,  the  proper  life 
of  the  individual,  by  negating  the  principle  of  free  com- 
petition. The  individualistic  extreme,  on  the  other  hand, 
would  exclude  the  State  from  the  industrial  sphere,  and 
leave  economic  law  to  operate  unguided  and  unchecked 
by  any  ethical  considerations, — a  course  equally  fatal  to 
the  moral  life  of  the  community.  The  true  view  would 
seem  to  be  that,  while  the  industrial  sphere  is  to  be 
recognised  as  having  a  nature  of  its  own,  and  economic 
law  is  not  to  be  confused  with  ethical,  yet  the  ethical 
sphere  includes  the  industrial  as  it  includes  all  others, 
and  its  law  must  therefore  operate  through  the  law  of  the 
latter.  The  State,  accordingly,  as  the  all-inclusive  social 
unity,  must  guard  and  foster  the  ethical  life  of  its  citizens 
in  the  industrial  as  in  the  other  spheres  of  that  life. 

As  regards  the  distribution  of  material  wealth,  the  State 


310  The  Moral  Life 

has  also  a  function  assigned  to  it  by  its  ethical  constitu- 
tion. In  order  that  the  struggle  for  mere  '  bread  and 
butter '  may  not  consume  all  the  energies  of  the  masses 
of  its  citizens,  but  that  each  individual  in  these  masses 
may  have  scope  for  the  development  of  his  higher  ethical 
capacities,  for  his  proper  self-development,  the  State  must 
see  that  the  '  furniture  of  fortune '  is  not  so  unequally 
distributed  that,  in  any  individual,  the  activities  of  the 
moral  life  are  rendered  impossible,  or  so  narrowly  limited 
as  to  be  practically  frustrated.  For  though  it  may  be 
true  that  the  ethical  good  is  in  its  essence  spiritual,  and 
that  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of 
the  things  which  he  possesseth,  it  is  also  true  that  the 
moral  life,  as  we  know  it,  has  a  physical  basis,  and  that, 
without  a  certain  measure  of  material  well  -  being,  the 
good  will  can  find  but  little  expression  and  realisation  in 
activity.  The  potential  manhood  in  each  can  be  actualised 
only  by  an  act  of  individual  choice ;  yet,  without  certain 
conditions,  such  actualisation  is  impossible.  It  is  for  the 
State  so  to  improve  the  conditions  or  environment  of 
those  against  whom  fortune — it  may  be  in  the  shape 
of  economic  law — has  discriminated,  as  to  make  a  full 
ethical  life  for  them  also  possible. 

12.  The  permanence  of  the  State. — In  such  ways 
as  these  the  State  may  serve  the  ethical  end.  The  ques- 
tion may  finally  be  raised,  whether  the  State  is  itself  a 
permanent  ethical  institution,  or  destined,  after  discharg- 
ing a  temporary  function,  to  give  place  to  some  higher 
form  of  social  organisation.  Is  the  final  form  of  society 
non-political,  rather  than  political  ?  As  the  individual 
emancipates  himself  from  political  control  by  assuming 
the  control  of  himself,  may  not  society  ultimately  eman- 
cipate itself  from  the  control  of  the  State  ?  And  may 
not  the  narrower  virtue  of  patriotism,  or  devotion  to  our 
country,  give  place  to  the  larger  virtue  of  a  universal 
philanthropy  and  cosmopolitanism  ?  This  is,  of  course, 


The  Social  Life  311 

a  question  on  which  we  can  only  speculate ;  but  our 
practical  attitude  towards  the  State  will  be  to  some 
extent  affected  by  our  disposition  to  answer  it  in  the  one 
way  or  the  other.  It  seems  to  me  that,  while  the  form  of 
the  State  may  continue  to  change,  the  State  itself  must 
remain  as  the  great  institution  of  the  moral  life,  unless 
that  life  undergoes  a  fundamental  change.  Peace  may 
permanently  supplant  war,  and  harmony  antagonism,  in 
the  relation  of  State  to  State.  But  the  permanence  of 
the  State  itself  seems  consistent  with  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  life.  The  concentration  of  patriotism 
is  not  necessarily  identical  with  narrowness  and  limi- 
tation. "  It  is  just  the  narrower  ties  that  divide  the 
allegiance  which  most  surely  foster  the  wider  affections." * 
On  the  other  hand,  cosmopolitanism  has  proved  a  failure 
when  subjected  to  the  test  of  history.  The  Stoics  were 
cosmopolitans ;  so  also  were  the  Cynics  before  them. 
But,  in  both  cases,  cosmopolitanism  proved  itself  a  neg- 
ative rather  than  a  positive  principle:  it  resulted  in 
individualism  and  social  disintegration.  We  best  serve 
humanity  when  we  serve  our  country  best,  as  our  best 
service  to  our  country  is  our  service  to  our  immediate 
community,  and  our  best  service  to  our  community  is  the 
service  of  our  family,  and  friends,  and  neighbours.  For 
here,  once  more,  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  the  fal- 
lacy of  the  abstract  universal.  Humanity  is  only  a  vague 
abstraction  until  we  particularise  it  in  the  nation,  as  the 
latter  itself  also  is  until  we  still  further  particularise  and 
individualise  it  The  true  universal  is  the  concrete  uni- 
versal, or  the  universal  in  the  particular;  and  we  can 
well  believe  that  in  the  life  of  domestic  piety,  of  true 
neighbourliness,  and  of  good  citizenship,  our  best  duty  to 
humanity  itself  is  abundantly  fulfilled.  The  true  philan- 
thropy must  always  begin  at  home,  and,  as  far  as  we  can 
see,  nationalism  is  as  permanent  a  principle  of  the  moral 
life  as  individualism. 

1  J.  MacCunn,  Ethics  of  Citizenship,  p.  46. 


312  The  Moral  Life 


NOTE. 
THE  THEORY  OF  PUNISHMENT. 

A  GROWING  number  of  ethical  thinkers,  as  well  as  of  practical 
philanthropists,  maintain  the  necessity  of  a  radical  change  in  our 
view  of  punishment.  We  must  substitute,  they  contend,  for  the 
older  or  retributive  theory  the  deterrent  and  reformative  theories. 
The  new  science  of  criminology  is  founded  upon  the  theory  that 
crime  is  a  pathological  phenomenon,  a  form  of  insanity,  an  in- 
herited or  acquired  degeneracy.1  It  follows  that  the  proper  treat- 
ment of  the  criminal  is  that  which  seeks  his  cure,  rather  than  his 
punishment.  Prisons  must  be  superseded  by  hospitals,  asylums, 
and  reformatories. 

An  advance  in  human  feeling,  as  well  as  in  intelligence,  is  to  be 
seen  in  this  movement,  both  in  its  theoretical  and  in  its  practical 
aspects  ;  an  advance  from  the  hard,  blind  desire  for  justice,  and  the 
unrelenting  and  unreasonable  spirit  of  vindictiveness,  to  a  gentler 
and  wiser  humanity.  And  society  is  now  so  securely  organised  that 
it  can  afford  to  be  not  merely  just,  but  generous  as  well.  The  ques- 
tion, however,  is,  whether  the  newer  and  the  older  views  of  pun- 
ishment are  mutually  exclusive,  and,  if  not,  what  is  their  relation 
to  one  another ;  whether  the  substitution  of  the  deterrent  and  re- 
formative for  the  retributive  view  is  ethically  sound,  or  whether,  in 
our  recoil  from  the  older  view,  we  are  not  in  danger  of  going  to  the 
opposite  extreme  and  losing  the  element  of  truth  contained  in  the 
retributive  theory. 

We  must  acknowledge,  to  begin  with,  that  the  new  theory  can 
point  to  many  facts  for  its  basis.  The  general  principle  of  heredity 
is  operative  in  the  sphere  of  crime  and  vice,  no  less  than  in  that 
of  virtue.  We  might  almost  say  that  the  criminal  is  born,  not 
made,  or,  rather,  that  he  is  more  born  than  made.  Crime  seems  to 
be  almost  as  instinctive  in  some  natures  as  goodness  is  in  others. 
This  instinctive  tendency  to  evil,  developed  by  favourable  circum- 
stances or  environment,  results  in  the  criminal  act  and  in  the  life 
of  crime.  There  is  a  criminal  class,  a  kind  of  caste,  which  propa- 
gates itself.  Crime  is  a  profession,  with  a  code  of  honour  and  an 


1  Cf.  A.  Macdonald,  "Ethics  as  applied  to  Criminology"  (Journal  of 
Mental  Science,  Jan.  1891). 


The  Social  Life  313 

etiquette  of  its  own  ;  almost  a  vocation,  calling  for  a  special  apti- 
tude, moral  and  intellectual.  Have  we  not  here  a  great  pathologi- 
cal phenomenon,  a  disease  to  be  cured,  not  punished  ? 

But  we  cannot  carry  out  the  pathological  idea.  It  is  only  an 
analogy  or  metaphor  after  all,  and,  like  all  metaphors,  may  easily 
prove  misleading,  if  taken  as  a  literal  description  of  the  facts.  We 
distinguish  cases  of  criminal  insanity  from  cases  of  crime  proper. 
In  the  former,  the  man  is  treated  as  a  patient,  is  confined  or  re- 
strained, is  managed  by  others.  But  he  is,  by  acknowledgment,  so 
much  the  less  a  man  because  he  may  be  treated  in  this  way :  he  is 
excused  for  that  which,  in  another,  would  be  punished  as  a  crime  ; 
he  "is  not  held  accountable  for  his  actions.  The  kleptomaniac,  for 
example,  is  not  punished,  but  excused.  Are  we  to  say  that  the  differ- 
ence between  these  actions  and  crimes  proper  is  only  one  of  degree, 
and  that  the  criminal  is  always  a  pathological  or  abnormal  specimen 
of  humanity  1  Do  all  criminals  border  close  on  insanity  ?  Even 
if  so,  we  must  recognise,  among  bad  as  well  as  among  good  men,  a 
border-line  between  the  sane  and  the  insane  ;  to  resolve  all  badness 
into  insanity  does  not  conduce  to  clear  thinking.  A  point  may  in- 
deed be  reached  in  the  life  of  crime,  as  in  the  life  of  vice  generally, 
after  which  a  man  ceases  to  'be  himself,'  and  may  therefore  be 
treated  as  a  thing  rather  than  as  a  person  ;  a  point  after  which, 
self-control  being  lost,  external  control  must  take  its  place.  But 
normal  crime,  if  it  has  anything  to  do  with  insanity,  is  rather  its 
cause  than  its  result. 

To  reduce  crime  to  a  pathological  phenomenon,  is  to  sap  the 
very  foundations  of  our  moral  judgments  ;  merit  as  well  as  demerit, 
reward  as  well  as  punishment,  are  thereby  undermined.  Such  a 
view  may  be  scientific  ;  it  is  not  ethical,  for  it  refuses  to  recognise 
the  commonest  moral  distinctions.  After  all  these  explanations 
have  been  given,  there  is  always  an  unexplained  residuum,  the  man 
himself.  A  man  knows  himself  from  the  inside,  as  it  were  ;  and  a 
man  does  not  excuse  himself  on  such  grounds.  Nor  would  the 
majority  of  men,  however  criminal,  be  willing  to  have  their  crimes 
put  down  to  the  account  of  insanity  ;  most  men  would  resent  such 
a  rehabilitation  of  their  morals  at  the  expense  of  their  '  intellects.' 

This  leads  us  to  remark  a  second  impossibility  in  the  theory — 
namely,  that  the  ordinary  criminal,  whether  he  be  a  pathological 
specimen  or  not,  will  not  submit  to  be  treated  as  a  patient  or  a  case. 
For  he,  like  yourself,  is  a  person,  and  insists  on  being  respected  as 
such  ;  he  is  not  a  thing,  to  be  passively  moulded  by  society  accord- 
ing to  its  ideas  either  of  its  own  convenience  or  of  his  good.  Even 


314  The  Moral  Life 

the  criminal  man  will  not  give  up  his  self-control,  or  put  himself  in 
your  hands  and  let  you  cure  him.  His  will  is  his  own,  and  he  alone 
can  reform  himself.  He  will  not  become  the  patient  of  society,  to 
be  operated  upon  by  it.  The  appeal,  in  all  attempts  at  reformation, 
must  be  to  the  man  himself ;  his  sanction  must  be  obtained,  and  his 
co-operation  secured,  before  reformation  can  begin.  He  is  not  an 
automaton,  to  be  regulated  from  without.  The  State  cannot  annex 
the  individual ;  be  he  criminal  or  saint,  his  life  is  his  own,  and  its 
springs  are  deep  within.  It  is  a  truism,  but  it  has  to  be  repeated 
in  the  present  connection,  that  all  moral  control  is  ultimately  self- 
control. 

In  virtue  of  his  manhood  or  personality,  then,  the  criminal  must 
be  convinced  of  the  righteousness  of  the  punishment.  Possessing,  as 
he  does,  the  universal  human  right  of  private  judgment,  the  right  to 
question  and  criticise  according  to  his  own  inner  light,  he  must  be 
made  to  see  that  the  act  of  society  is  a  punishment,  and  to  accept  it 
as  such  ;  he  must  see  the  righteousness  of  the  punishment,  before  it 
can  work  out  in  him  its  peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness.  Here,  in 
the  force  of  this  inner  appeal,  in  such  an  awakening  of  the  man's 
slumbering  conscience,  lies  the  ethical  value  of  punishment.  With- 
out this  element,  we  have  only  a  superficial  view  of  it  as  an  external 
force  operating  upon  the  man.  Such  a  violent  procedure  may  be 
necessary,  especially  in  the  earlier  measures  of  society  for  its  own 
protection  ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  taken  as  the  type  of  penal  procedure, 
nor  is  it  effective  beyond  a  very  narrow  range.  A  man  may  be  re- 
strained in  this  way  from  a  particular  act  of  crime  on  a  particular 
occasion  ;  but  the  criminal  nature  in  him  is  not  touched,  the  crim- 
inal instincts  are  not  extirpated — they  will  bloom  again  in  some 
other  deed  of  crime.  The  deepest  warrant  for  the  effectiveness  of 
punishment  as  a  deterrent  and  reformative  agent  is  found  in  its 
ethical  basis  as  an  act  of  retribution.  True  reformation  comes  only 
with  the  acceptance  of  the  punishment,  by  mind  and  heart,  as  the 
inevitable  fruit  of  the  act.  For  punishment  thus  becomes  a  kind  of 
revelation  to  the  man  of  the  true  significance  of  his  character  and 
life.  A  man  may  thus  be  shocked  into  a  better  life.  For  acci- 
dental calamity,  or  for  suffering  which  he  has  not  brought  upon 
himself,  a  man  does  not  condemn  himself.  Such  self-condemnation 
comes  only  with  insight  into  the  retributive  nature  of  the  calamity. 
It  is  just  this  element  of  retribution  that  converts  calamity  or  mis- 
fortune into  punishment.  The  judgment  of  society  upon  the  man 
must  become  the  judgment  of  the  man  upon  himself,  if  it  is  to  be 
effective  as  an  agent  in  his  reformation.  This  private  re-enactment 


The  Social  Life  315 

of  the  social  judgment  comes  with  the  perception  of  retribution  or 
desert. 

Punishment  is.  in  its  essence,  a  rectification  of  the  moral  order  ot 
which  crime  is  the  notorious  breach.  Yet  it  is  not  a  mere  barren 
vindication  of  that  order ;  it  has  an  effect  on  character,  and  moulds 
that  to  order.  Christianity  has  so  brought  home  to  us  this  brighter 
side  of  punishment,  this  beneficent  possibility  in  all  suffering,  that 
it  seems  artificial  to  separate  the  retributive  from  the  reformative 
purpose  of  punishment.  The  question  is  not  "  whether,  apart 
from  its  effects,  there  would  be  any  moral  propriety  in  the  mere 
infliction  of  pain  for  pain's  sake."1  Why  separate  the  act  from 
its  effects  in  this  way  ?  In  reality  they  are  inseparable.  The 
punishment  need  not  be  "  for  the  sake  of  punishment,  and  for  no 
other  reason " ;  it  need  not  be  "  modified  for  utilitarian  reasons." 
The  total  conception  of  punishment  may  contain  various  elements 
indissolubly  united.  The  question  is,  Which  is  the  fundamental ; 
out  of  which  do  the  others  grow  ?  Nor  do  I  see  that  such  a  theory 
of  punishment  is  open  to  the  charge  of  syncretism.  I  should  rather 
call  it  synthetic  and  concrete,  as  taking  account  of  all  the  elements, 
and  exhibiting  their  correlation.  Might  we  not  sum  up  these  elements 
in  the  word  '  discipline,'  meaning  thereby  that  the  end  of  punishment 
is  to  bring  home  to  a  man  such  a  sense  of  guilt  as  shall  work  in  him 
a  deep  repentance  for  the  evil  past,  and  a  new  obedience  for  the 
time  to  come  1 

Whether,  or  how  far,  such  a  conception  of  punishment  can  be  real- 
ised by  the  State,  is  another  question.  Its  realisation  would  mean 
that  the  State  should  stand  to  the  individual,  in  some  measure,  in  loco 
parentis — that  the  State  is  a  great  moral  educator.  Such  a  pater- 
nal function  is,  at  any  rate,  no  less  practicable  for  the  State  than 
the  therapeutic  function  assigned  to  it  by  the  theory  we  have  been 
considering  ;  for  the  latter  function,  to  be  effectively  discharged, 
would  imply  an  exhaustive  diagnosis  of  each  criminal  case.  And 
we  have  seen  that  the  State  has  a  moral  end,  that  its  function  is 
not  the  merely  negative  or  police  one  of  the  protection  of  individual 
from  individual,  but  the  moral  education  and  development  of  the 
individual  himself.  It  is,  indeed,  mainly  to  the  external  and  in- 
adequate modern  conception  of  the  State  that  we  must  trace  the 
external  and,  I  have  sought  to  show,  inadequate  view  of  punishment 
as  primarily  deterrent,  and,  even  when  reformative,  undertaken  for 
the  protection  of  society  from  the  individual,  rather  than  in  the 


1  H.  Rashdall,  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  ii.  p.  22. 


316  The  Moral  Life 

interests  of  the  individual  himself.  Civil  punishment  is,  or  ought 
to  be,  undertaken  in  the  interests  of  the  moral  individual ;  it  is  one 
of  the  arrangements  of  the  State,  which  is  the  individual's  moral 
sphere.  But  even  if  we  refuse  to  go  beyond  the  protective  or  de- 
terrent point  of  view,  we  have  seen  that  this  standpoint  coincides 
with  both  the  reformative  and  the  retributive.  In  proceeding  from 
the  one  to  the  other  of  these  views  of  punishment,  we  are  only 
proceeding  from  an  external  to  an  internal  view  of  the  same  thing. 
To  be  permanently  deterrent,  punishment  must  be  educative  or 
reformative  as  well ;  there  must  be  an  inner  as  well  as  an  outer 
reformation.  To  the  social  prevention  must  be  added  self-prevention, 
and  this  comes  only  with  inner  reformation.  Such  a  reformation, 
again,  implies  the  acceptance,  by  the  criminal,  of  the  punishment  as 
just,  his  recognition  in  it  of  the  ethical  completion  of  his  own  act ; 
and  this  is  the  element  of  retribution  or  desert,  which  is  thus  seen  to 
be  the  basis  of  the  other  elements  in  punishment. 


LITERATURE. 

Plato,  Republic  (Davies  and  Vaughan's  or  Jowett's  trans.) 

Aristotle,  Politics,  esp.  bks.  i.-v.,  viii.  (Welldon's  trans.) 

Hegel,  Philosophy  of  Right  (Dyde's  trans.),  part  iii. 

J.  Hutchison  Stirling,  Philosophy  of  Law. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics  (3rd  ed.),  bk.  iii.  ch.  i.,  ii.  ;  Introduc- 
tion to  Social  Philosophy. 

D.  G.  Ritchie,  Principles  of  State  Interference;  Natural  Rights. 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  iv. 

S.  S.  Laurie,  Ethica,  or  The  Ethics  of  Reason  (2nd  ed.),  ch.  xix.-xxx. 

H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  parts  iv.-vi. 

J.  C.  Lorimer,  Institutes  of  Law. 

F.  M.  Taylor,  The  Right  of  the  State  to  Be. 

J.  MacCunn,  Ethics  of  Citizenship. 

Wundt,  Ethik,  pp.  529-577. 

Paulsen,  System  der  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  pp.  467-861. 

Hbffding,  Ethik,  pp.  182-484. 

Ludwig  Stein,  Die  Sociale  Frage  im  Lichte  der  Philosophic,  esp.  pp.  511- 
548,  598-749. 


317 


CHAPTER     III. 

MOEAL    PROGRESS. 

1.  The  nature  of  moral  progress. — The  fact  of 
moral  progress  is,  from  an  ethical  point  of  view,  in- 
dubitable. The  very  nature  of  an  ideal  implies  the 
possibility  and  the  fact  of  a  gradual  approach  toward  its 
realisation ;  an  ideal  which  did  not  thus  reveal  itself 
in  the  process  of  the  moral  life  would  be  no  ideal. 
Moreover,  if  the  moral  ideal  is  the  key  to  the  individual 
life,  it  is  no  less  the  key  to  the  larger  life  of  the  race  of 
moral  beings.  The  history  of  the  race  becomes  intel- 
ligible, as  we  shall  see  later,  only  on  the  presupposition 
of  the  presence  and  operation  in  it  of  such  an  ideal 
principle.  The  verification  of  any  interpretation  of 
the  moral  ideal  remains  incomplete  until  it  is  shown  to 
explain  the  history  of  evolving  moral  life,  the  process 
of  moral  experience  as  a  whole.  The  ideal  must  be 
the  unifying  principle  of  the  successive  historical  mani- 
festations of  morality,  as  well  as  of  its  various  pres- 
ent forms.  Not  that  we  are  to  find  any  theoretic  or 
reflective  view  of  the  ideal  consciously  and  explicitly 
present  at  every  stage  of  moral  evolution,  or  that 
such  an  explicit  and  reflective  consciousness  of  it  is 
needed  to  explain  that  evolution.  The  ideal  may  work 
unconsciously  as  well  as  consciously,  and  may  disguise 
itself  under  many  strange  forms.  But  the  recognition 
of  the  presence  and  operation,  from  the  beginning,  of 


318  The  Moral  Life 

this  ideal  factor,  the  identification  of  it  as  the  grand 
agent  in  the  universal  ethical  process,  would  be  the 
crowning  verification  of  an  ethical  theory. 

For,  while  we  must  never  forget  the  empirical  ele- 
ment in  the  evolution  of  morality — the  play  of  cir- 
cumstances, the  action  of  '  environment '  —  this  alone 
would  not  explain  moral  progress.  Although  circum- 
stances determine  the  form  which  the  ideal  assumes 
from  age  to  age,  it  is  still  the  ideal  itself,  as  thus  de- 
termined, that  explains  the  process  of  its  own  gradual 
realisation.  While  the  ideal  is  approached  by  different 
paths  at  different  stages  of  moral  experience,  it  is  as  the 
several  ways  to  a  common  goal  that  these  paths  are 
followed.  Although  the  choice  of  means  is  determined 
by  the  concrete  relations  in  which  man  actually  finds 
himself,  the  choice  of  these  means  would  still  not  be 
made  unless  the  end  which  they  mediate  had  itself  been 
chosen. 

It  is  moral  progress  or  evolution,  not  moral  creation 
— the  course,  not  the  origin,  of  morality — that  we  are  to 
look  for.  Morality  cannot  arise  out  of  the  non-moral,  as 
Spencer  seems  to  think.  Moral  progress  is  morality  in 
progress,  '  progressive  morality ' ;  never  at  any  stage  a 
progress  to  morality,  or  a  progress  from  the  non-moral  to 
the  moral  stage.  This  last  form  of  progress,  even  if  it 
existed,  would  have  an  interest  only  for  the  anthropologist, 
not  for  the  moralist,  in  whose  eyes  man  is  from  the  first 
moment  of  his  existence,  potentially  if  not  actually,  a 
moral  being.  If  man  started  on  his  career  as  a  non- 
moral  being,  he  could  never  become  moral,  any  more 
than  he  could  make  any  intellectual  attainments  if  he 
were  not  from  the  first  an  intellectual  being.  The 
moralist  cannot  accept  any  catastrophic  or  revolutionary 
or  artificial  theory  of  the  origin  of  morality.  A  theory 
which  seeks  to  explain  this  origin  by  reference  to  a  pre- 
moral  condition,  to  which  morality  stands  in  antithesis, 
condemns  itself  by  its  very  statement.  If  the  original 


Moral  Progress  319 

and  natural  condition  of  man  were  that  of  universal 
antagonism,  helium  omnium  contra  omnes,  the  peace  of 
morality  had  been  impossible.  If  the  original  and  natural 
state  were  homo  homini  lupus,  the  '  ape  and  tiger '  nature 
had  never  given  place  to  the  gentleness  and  love  of  the 
moral  world.  It  is  as  true  in  the  sphere  of  morality  as 
in  that  of  nature  or  of  knowledge,  that  the  seeds  of  the 
latest  fruits  of  the  evolutionary  process  must  be  already 
present  in  the  first  stages  of  that  process.  Ex  nihilo 
nikil  Jit.  It  is  also  and  equally  true  in  all  these  spheres 
that  we  find  in  the  later  stages  the  fuller  manifestation 
of  the  essential  nature  whose  evolution  we  are  tracing, 
that  the  latest  is  the  truest.  As  the  oak  is  the  truth  of 
the  acorn,  so  is  the  man  of  ripe  culture  and  refinement 
the  truth  dimly  prefigured  by  the  primeval  savage. 

Accordingly,  when  we  investigate  the  most  primitive 
forms  of  human  practice,  we  find  that  we  are  already  in 
presence  of  that  feature  which  characterises  its  latest 
forms — the  consciousness  of  moral  obligation.  Certain 
types  of  activity  are  approved,  others  condemned.  The 
seat  of  authority  is  custom,  established  usage,  public 
opinion.  To  this  authority  the  individual  is  responsible. 
From  the  first,  man  is  a  social  being ;  the  tribe  or  the 
family  is  the  unit,  and  the  individual  has  no  interests 
apart  from  the  tribal  and  domestic  interests  in  which  he 
shares.  Apart  from  this  social  relation,  he  would  be  a 
mere  fragment,  an  unreal  abstraction  which  the  primi- 
tive mind  is  unable  to  conceive.  This  relation  pre- 
scribes to  him  the  law  of  his  conduct,  and  any  breach 
of  the  law  is  visited  with  such  penalties  as  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation  teaches  the  primitive  society.  The 
transformation  of  the  tribe,  with  its  unformulated  social 
requirements,  into  the  State,  with  its  written  laws,  comes 
later,  but  does  not  essentially  alter  the  situation ;  it 
only  makes  explicit  what  had  before  been  implicit.  The 
social  relation,  whether  tribal,  domestic,  or  political,  is  al- 
ways in  its  essence  a  moral  relation,  and  the  conscious- 


320  The  Moral  Life 

ness  of  these  wider  relations  and  of  their  claim  upon  the 
individual  life  is  the  consciousness  of  moral  obligation. 

Nor  is  the  constant  and  invariable  element  in  morality 
a  mere  abstract  consciousness  of  obligation — the  con- 
sciousness of  a  distinction  between  the  better  and  the 
worse.  We  find,  further,  an  approval  of  a  certain  con- 
crete quality  or  type  of  character  and  conduct,  and  a 
disapproval  of  the  opposite  quality  or  type.  The  variable 
element  is  found  in  the  specific  form  or  concrete  applica- 
tion of  the  virtues ;  in  their  sphere,  or  in  the  extent  of 
their  application;  and  in  the  estimate  of  their  relative 
importance,  or  in  the  emphasis  placed  upon  each. 

For  example,  the  primitive  man  agrees  with  his  classical 
and  modern  descendant  in  the  approval  of  courage  as  a 
virtuous  and  praiseworthy  quality,  and  in  the  condemna- 
tion of  cowardice  as  a  vicious  and  contemptible  quality. 
To  the  primitive  society,  however,  courage  inevitably 
takes  the  form  of  unflinching  purpose  in  attack  and 
defence,  as  for  the  classical  world  also  it  takes  the  form 
of  military  virtue ;  while  in  a  modern  industrial  society 
it  takes  more  naturally  the  form  of  quiet  and  patient  en- 
durance of  inevitable  evil  or  unflinching  devotion  to  some 
domestic  or  friendly  duty.  The  earlier  limitation  of  the 
virtue  to  some  single  form  of  activity  or  to  some  one 
relation  is  at  a  later  time  removed,  and  the  sphere  of  its 
application  extended,  until  at  last  it  finds  application  in 
the  total  sphere  of  human  activity  and  in  all  the  relations 
of  human  life.  Further,  the  emphasis  placed  upon  the 
virtue  of  courage  in  early  times  and  in  a  military  State, 
and  in  times  of  war  in  a  peaceful  State,  is  transferred,  in 
later  times  and  in  an  industrial  State,  to  some  other 
virtue,  such  as  honesty,  which  the  changed  conditions 
call  for  more  imperiously.  Even  in  Plato's  time  the 
emphasis  had  shifted,  and  for  him  courage  was  "  the 
fourth  and  not  the  first  part  of  virtue,  either  in  indi- 
viduals or  States."1 

1  Laws,  ii.  666  E.    Of.  G.  L.  Dickinson,  The  Greek  View  of  Life,  p.  102. 


Moral  Progress  321 

Or  take  the  virtue  of  benevolence.  At  no  stage  in 
the  evolution  of  morality  is  benevolence  condemned  and 
malevolence  approved.  The  variation  of  moral  sentiment 
and  practice  is  seen  first,  as  before,  in  the  specific  form 
or  application  of  the  virtue.  In  primitive  life  the  most 
common  form  of  benevolence  is  hospitality,  while  the 
entire  service  rendered  by  the  individual  to  his  family 
and  tribe  may  be  regarded  as  benevolent  or  altruistic 
activity.  In  later  times  the  virtue  is  less  apt  to  take 
the  forms  of  hospitality  and  patriotism,  and  in  place  of 
these  we  find  philanthropy  and  charity  arising  in  re- 
sponse to  the  new  conditions.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
limitation  of  the  virtue,  in  primitive  times  and  in  the 
military  State,  to  the  individual's  own  society ;  the  fact 
that,  as  Spencer  expresses  it,  'internal  amity'  means 
'  external  enmity,'  illustrates  the  narrowness  of  the  sphere 
of  that  benevolence  which  has  in  later  times  been  so 
extended  as  to  include  mankind  within  its  scope,  and  to 
sublimate  patriotism  into  humanitarianism.  Moreover, 
as  the  storm  and  stress  of  the  struggle  for  existence 
give  place  to  settled  peace,  the  emphasis  falls  more  and 
more  upon  benevolence,  and  love  is  seen  to  be  the  fulfil- 
ment of  all  virtue. 

Again,  the  virtue  of  justice  is  to  be  found  in  the 
earliest,  as  well  as  the  latest,  stages  of  morality.  The 
only  forms  of  it,  however,  which  are  recognised  are  the 
most  obvious  and  external.  It  manifests  itself  at  first 
only  in  the  form  of  retaliation  of  injury  for  injury,  and 
the  aggressions  which  are  thus  repaid  in  kind  are  of  the 
rudest  physical  order;  later  it  takes  more  positive,  as 
well  as  subtler,  forms.  At  first  the  scope  of  the  virtue  is 
intra-tribal ;  and,  even  in  the  later  times  of  the  military 
State,  the  range  of  its  application  is  generally  limited, 
like  that  of  benevolence,  to  the  members  of  the  same 
nation  or  empire.  It  is  only  in  the  modern  industrial 
State  that  the  limits  of  nationality  and  of  empire  are 
really  transcended,  and  that  the  scope  of  justice  becomes 

x 


322  The  Moral  Life 

international  and  cosmopolitan.  We  find,  also,  that  the 
comparative  emphasis  placed  upon  justice  and  benevo- 
lence is  gradually  reversed  as  we  pass  from  earlier  to 
later  times.  In  a  ruder  age,  when  security  is  the  first 
interest  and  there  is  no  leisure  to  spare  from  the  main- 
tenance of  being  for  the  pursuit  of  well-being,  it  is 
inevitable  that  the  claims  of  justice  should  seem  para- 
mount. In  a  later  and  more  peaceful  time,  when  the 
foundations  of  the  social  order  have  been  well  and  truly 
laid,  and  the  opportunity  has  come  to  build  upon  them 
the  fabric  of  a  more  perfect  social  life,  it  is  no  less 
inevitable  that  the  claims  of  mere  ordinary  justice  should 
give  place  to  the  claims  of  that  higher  justice  which  we 
call  benevolence. 

Perhaps  the  last  virtue  which  we  should  expect  to  find 
in  primitive  society  is  temperance.  Yet  the  license  of 
primitive  life  is  not  unbridled.  There  are  limits  beyond 
which  it  is  not  allowed  to  go,  although  the  limits  are  not 
placed  where  we  should  place  them.  The  application 
of  the  virtue  is  apt  to  be  limited  to  one  relation  of  life, 
the  sexual,  and  even  here  its  range  is  very  narrow,  and 
its  claims  are  easily  satisfied.  In  the  military  State  and 
in  times  of  war  in  an  industrial  State,  this  virtue  de- 
velops slowly.  The  Greeks  are  the  classical  represen- 
tatives of  temperance,  and  the  Greek  virtue  is  much 
narrower  and  less  exacting  than  its  modern  represen- 
tative.1 The  range  of  the  virtue  has  been  so  greatly 
extended,  and  the  rigour  of  its  claims  so  keenly  ap- 
preciated, by  the  Christian  consciousness  of  the  modern 
world,  as  completely  to  overshadow  its  earlier  manifes- 
tations. Yet  temperance  being  an  essentially  negative 
virtue,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  emphasis  which  for 
the  Greek  mind  and  for  the  mediaeval  Christian  mind 
made  it  the  cardinal  and  fundamental  virtue,  should 
later  be  transferred  to  the  positive  virtue  of  culture  or 
self-realisation.  It  has  been  very  slowly  and  gradually 

1  Cf.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  v.  §§  261-271. 


Moral  Progress  323 

that  this  change  of  emphasis  has  taken  place,  and  self- 
sacrifice  has  yielded  to  self -fulfilment  as  the  law  of  the 
moral  life. 

2.  The  law  of  moral  progress  :  the  discovery  of 
the  individual. — Sir  Henry  Maine  has  formulated  the 
law  of  social  progress  in  the  memorable  words  that  "  the 
movement  of  the  progressive  societies  has  hitherto  been  a 
movement  from  Status  to  Contract."  !  "  The  individual  is 
steadily  substituted  for  the  family,  as  the  unit  of  which 
civil  laws  take  account." 2  In  the  recognition  of  the 
power  of  contract  this  distinguished  student  of  ancient 
law  finds  the  first  clear  perception  of  the  individual  as 
a  separate  and  responsible  agent,  who  occupies  henceforth 
in  the  eyes  of  the  law  the  place  hitherto  occupied  by 
society.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  fundamental  law  of  moral 
progress,  whether  in  the  race  or  in  the  individual,  may 
be  stated  in  essentially  the  same  form.  That  progress  is, 
in  sum  and  substance,  the  progressive  discovery  of  the  in- 
dividual. It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  that  the  idea  of 
individual  moral  independence  and  responsibility  is  the 
product  of  long  centuries  of  moral  development.  The 
ethical  unit  of  earlier  times  is  the  tribe  or  the  family ; 
later  it  becomes  the  State ;  later  still  perhaps  the  caste 
or  class ;  and,  last  of  all,  the  individual.  It  is  long 
before,  from  the  tribe  and  the  family,  from  the  State 
and  the  class,  the  individual  emerges  in  the  complete- 
ness and  independence  of  his  moral  being.  And  even 
when  the  individual  has  differentiated  himself  from  the 
larger  social  whole,  it  is  long  before  he  comes  to  a  true 
understanding  of  himself  and  of  his  relation  to  society. 
An  abstract  and  extreme  Individualism  invites  a  return 
to  the  no  less  abstract  extreme  of  Socialism.  The  true 
nature  of  the  individual  answers  to  the  true  nature  of 
society,  and  with  the  self-discovery  of  the  former  comes 
the  self -discovery  of  the  latter. 

1  Ancient  Law,  ch.  v.  p.  170  (llth  edition).  2  Ibid.,  p.  168. 


324  The  Moral  Life 

Of  the  solidarity,  in  ancient  society,  of  the  family  and 
the  individual,  we  have  a  striking  illustration  in  the 
patria  potestas  of  the  Komans.  The  paternal  authority 
vested  in  the  head  of  the  family  was  absolute,  and 
against  it  the  individual  had  no  rights.  Of  the  solid- 
arity of  the  State  and  the  individual,  the  grand  illustra- 
tion is  that  of  the  Hellenic  city-states.  Plato,  in  his 
Republic,  gives  expression  to  this  ideal.  So  confident  is 
he  in  the  ethical  supremacy  of  the  State,  so  convinced 
of  the  absoluteness  of  its  value,  that  he  would  make  it 
the  sole  criterion  of  individual  virtue.  The  State  is  the 
ethical  unit,  and  its  claim  upon  the  service  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  absolute.  Plato  cannot  conceive  any  distinction 
or  antagonism  between  the  good  of  the  individual  and 
that  of  the  State,  between  the  ethical  and  the  political 
point  of  view.  The  measure  of  ethical  and  political  well- 
being  is  the  same.  The  life  of  citizenship  is  an  exhaus- 
tive expression  of  the  moral  nature  of  its  citizens ;  there 
is  no  distinction  between  the  citizen  and  the  man.  Those 
who  cannot  discharge  the  duties  of  citizenship — the  help- 
lessly weak  and  the  incurably  sick — have  no  raison  d'etre, 
and  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  live,  a  burden  and  an  evil 
to  the  State.  The  entire  education  of  the  individual  is 
an  education  in  citizenship.  The  family  and  private 
property  are  disallowed,  as  inconsistent  with  a  perfect 
loyalty  to  the  State.  And  while  the  Platonic  State  is 
doubtless  an  idealisation  of  the  actual  Greek  State,  it  is 
yet  only  the  extreme  logical  development  of  the  Greek 
view  of  the  State  as  the  true  ethical  unit  and  norm. 

This  absolute  confidence  in  the  State  did  not  last 
long.  Its  ethical  inadequacy  soon  began  to  appear,  and 
the  peril  of  staking  their  moral  well-being  upon  the  well- 
being  of  the  State  soon  became  manifest  to  the  more 
reflective  minds  among  the  Greeks.  In  Aristotle  we  see 
the  beginning  of  the  change  of  standpoint  from  the  State 
to  the  individual.  For  him  the  individual  has  become 
clearly  an  end-in-himself,  and  the  State  but  the  medium  of 


Moral  Progress  325 

his  ethical  life.  While  the  State  is  chronologically  prior 
to  the  individual,  the  individual  is  logically  prior  to  the 
State,  which  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  distinction  between 
good  and  evil,  justice  and  injustice,  and  the  like.  It  is 
the  means,  he  is  the  end.  Aristotle  still  maintains,  how- 
ever, like  Plato,  that  man  is  a  '  political  animal,'  and 
that  the  individual  apart  from  the  State  would  not  be  a 
moral  being.  The  man  without  a  State  is  either  below 
or  above  man  as  we  know  him  in  his  civilised  condition, 
is  either  a  brute  or  a  god.  Aristotle's  empirical  faith- 
fulness to  the  individual,  indeed,  colours  his  ethics  as 
well  as  his  metaphysics.  He  believes  that  "  there  is 
a  superiority  in  the  individual  as  against  the  general 
methods  of  education."  As  "a  teacher  of  boxing  does 
not  teach  all  his  pupils  to  box  in  the  same  style,  it 
would  seem  that  a  study  of  individual  character  is  the 
best  way  of  perfecting  the  education  of  the  individual." l 
Yet  for  Aristotle  as  for  Plato  ethics  is  only  a  part  of 
politics ;  in  the  one  we  see  the  good  writ  large,  in  the 
other  it  is  writ  small.  "  For  although  the  good  of  an 
individual  is  identical  with  the  good  of  a  State,  yet  the 
good  of  the  State,  whether  in  attainment  or  in  preserva- 
tion, is  evidently  greater  and  more  perfect.  For  while 
in  an  individual  by  himself  it  is  something  to  be  thank- 
ful for,  it  is  nobler  and  more  divine  in  a  nation  or 
State."2 

This  belief  in  the  inherent  divinity  or  '  naturalness ' 
of  the  State  had  been  undermined  by  the  Sophists,  who 
saw  in  it  only  an  artificial  product  of  human  convention, 
and  pointed  to  the  individual,  in  ethics  as  in  meta- 
physics, as  the  only  reality.  The  early  Socratic  schools 
had  also  sought  for  a  merely  private  and  individual  good, 
the  salvation  of  the  individual  soul.  The  ineffectiveness 
and  disappointing  failure  of  the  actual  State,  and  the 
growing  despair  of  its  future,  led  to  a  revival  of  politi- 
cal scepticism  in  the  post- Aristotelian  period ;  and  the 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  bk.  x.  ch.  x.  2  Ibid.,  bk.  L  ch.  L 


326  The  Moral  Life 

waning  confidence  in  the  State  meant  an  increasing 
confidence  in  the  individual.  Thus  it  was  only  the 
break-down  of  the  State  itself  that  compelled  the  indi- 
vidual to  look  within  himself  for  the  good  which  he 
could  no  longer  find  without.  The  Stoics  still  believe 
in  the  ideal  State,  but  it  has  become  for  them  '  a  city  of 
God '  which  can  never  be  realised  on  earth,  a  spiritual 
community,  a  Church  rather  than  a  State — the  Church 
invisible  of  the  wise  and  good.  The  ideal  of  the  Epi- 
cureans is  frankly  unpolitical ;  friendship  takes  the  place 
of  citizenship  as  the  bond  between  man  and  man,  and 
the  medium  of  the  highest  life  in  the  individual.  If 
we  feel  that  in  both  cases,  as  well  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Academic  Sceptics,  a  negative  has  been  substituted 
for  a  positive  ideal,  that  the  rest  and  peace  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul  has  taken  the  place  of  the  full  and  engross- 
ing activity  of  the  life  of  citizenship,  we  also  feel  that 
a  new  value  is  found  in  the  individual,  and  that  the  man 
behind  the  citizen  has  at  last  been  discovered. 

That  the  moral  or  practical  individualist  should  be  no 
less  extreme  in  his  appreciation  of  the  individual  and  in 
his  depreciation  of  the  State  than  is  the  intellectual  or 
metaphysical  individualist  in  his  exaltation  of  the  per- 
ceptual above  the  conceptual,  need  not  surprise  us.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  a  great  positive  advance  in  this 
moral  individualism  of  the  later  Greeks.  So  long  as  the 
political  and  the  ethical  points  of  view  were  identified,  not 
only  was  the  life  of  the  individual  citizen  inadequately 
interpreted,  but  the  life  of  the  individual  who  was  not  a 
citizen  found  no  interpretation  at  all.  If  the  man  behind 
the  citizen  remained  undiscovered,  the  man  who  was  not 
a  citizen  was  not  regarded  as  an  ethical  being.  He  was 
simply  an  instrument  of  the  State ;  the  ethical  life  of  the 
State  rested  upon  an  unethical,  because  an  unpolitical, 
basis.  Not  only  the  woman  and  the  slave,  but,  in  Sparta 
at  least,  the  artisan  and  the  labourer,  too,  were  thus  ex- 
cluded from  the  moral  world,  because  they  were  excluded 


Moral  Progress  327 

from  the  political.  But  the  Stoic  city  of  God  includes 
the  slave  as  well  as  the  free  man,  the  '  barbarian '  as 
well  as  the  Greek.  The  ethical  franchise  does  not  de- 
pend upon  the  political;  it  belongs  to  every  man,  to 
man  as  man.  Thus  the  discovery  of  the  individual 
meant  a  great  widening,  as  well  as  a  great  deepening, 
of  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  Greeks. 

It  was  political  adversity  that  taught  the  Hebrews 
the  same  lesson  ;  for  them  also  the  dissolution  of  the 
State  wrought  the  moral  emancipation  of  the  individual. 
Their  conscience  was,  like  that  of  the  Greeks,  essentially 
political ;  and  as  long  as  the  State  remained,  they  saw 
in  it  the  unit  of  responsibility.  The  nation  as  a  whole 
sinned  and  was  punished,  or  followed  righteousness  and 
was  rewarded.  This  sense  of  a  corporate  life  and  re- 
sponsibility extended  backward  over  the  past  and  for- 
ward over  the  future  generations  of  Israel.  The  life  of 
the  nation  was  continuous,  and  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
were  visited  upon  the  children  unto  the  third  and  fourth 
generation.  It  came  to  them  at  last  with  all  the  sur- 
prise of  a  fresh  discovery  that  responsibility  is  an 
individual  affair,  and  that  "  the  soul  that  sinneth,  it 
shall  die." 

Christianity  taught  with  a  new  emphasis  the  supreme 
value  of  the  individual  as  a  moral  being.  Its  chief 
interest  was  in  the  salvation  of  the  individual  soul,  and 
its  message  came  as  a  veritable  gospel  to  men  who  had 
already  learned  that  their  soul's  good  was  not  to  be 
found  without  but  within  themselves.  It  recognised  no 
distinction  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  cultured 
and  the  uncultured,  the  freeman  and  the  slave ;  or  if  it 
did,  it  was  primarily  to  the  poor,  the  uncultured,  and 
the  downtrodden  that  its  gospel  came.  It  might  well 
have  seemed  impossible  that  the  importance  of  the  indi- 
vidual should  ever  again  be  forgotten,  or  subordinated  to 
that  of  the  State.  Yet  such  a  return  to  the  older  view 
is  not  so  surprising  as  it  might  at  first  sight  appear. 


328  The  Moral  Life 

For  the  Christian  ideal  was  from  the  first  emphatically 
a  social,  as  well  as  an  individual,  ideal ;  it  was  a  gospel 
for  human  society  as  well  as  for  the  individual  man,  and 
from  the  first  the  Christian  Church  was  not  contented  to 
remain  the  Church  invisible.  As  Christianity  gradually 
took  visible  form  in  a  new  human  society,  the  ecclesi- 
astical polity  came  to  resemble  the  civil,  and  the  Civitas 
Dei  became  also  an  earthly  State.  Throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  Church  and  State  are  one,  'a  double- 
faced  unity/  like  soul  and  body.  The  Holy  Eoman 
Empire  is  the  realisation  of  the  ideal  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical State.  The  political  genius  of  the  Romans  was 
engaged  in  the  service  of  the  new  religion,  and  the 
individual  member  of  the  Christian  Church  was  subor- 
dinated to  the  ecclesiastical  State  as  absolutely  as  the 
individual  citizen  had  ever  been  subordinated  to  a 
merely  political  society.  Such  a  reabsorption  of  the 
individual  in  the  social  good  was  inevitable.  The 
theory  which  prevailed  throughout  the  Middle  Ages 
was  that  the  universal  is  alone  the  real,  and  that  its 
existence  is  independent  of  the  individual.  The  ideal 
essences — the  Church  and  the  State  —  were  therefore 
hypostatised,  and  made  ends  in  themselves.  Perhaps  it 
required  such  a  perfect  confidence  in  the  ecclesiastical 
State  and  such  a  complete  devotion  to  its  service,  to 
make  possible  that  new  start  in  civilisation  which  was 
implied  in  the  organisation  of  the  hosts  of  northern 
barbarians  into  a  stable  political  society. 

This  subordination  of  the  individual  to  the  ecclesi- 
astical State  meant,  however,  at  the  same  time,  the  sub- 
ordination of  morality  to  theology,  of  ethics  to  politics. 
The  Church  became  the  keeper  of  the  individual  con- 
science, the  priesthood  controlled  the  conduct  of  the 
laity.  Moreover  what  the  Church  through  its  councils 
and  its  priests  primarily  insisted  upon  was  not  the 
secular  part  of  conduct,  not  the  '  moral '  phase  of  life,  but 
its  sacred  and  religious  part,  the  performance  of  certain 


Moral  Progress  329 

ceremonies,  the  doing  of  certain  outward  acts,  rather 
than  the  inward  conformity  of  the  spirit  to  the  rule  of 
Christianity.  So  far  as  the  inward  life  was  taken  into 
account,  it  was  rather  the  intellectual  than  the  moral 
attitude  which  was  considered,  it  was  rather  the  obedi- 
ence of  the  mind  than  of  the  will  that  was  demanded. 
Faith  was  inculcated  at  the  expense  of  works,  and  the 
power  of  absolution  which  the  Church  claimed  for  itself 
was  exercised  and  magnified  in  a  way  which  was  very 
detrimental  to  the  interests  of  morality.1  The  moral 
corruption  of  the  Church  itself — the  poisoning  of  the 
fountains  of  the  moral  life — is  familiar  to  the  student 
of  mediaeval  history.  The  withdrawal  of  the  best  spirits 
of  the  age  from  the  service  of  their  fellows  into  the 
monasteries,  the  substitution  of  the  ideal  of  '  saintly ' 
self -culture  for  that  of  social  service,  of  ascetic  self- 
denial  for  positive  self-realisation,  of  '  other- worldliness  ' 
for  '  this  -worldliness,' — all  this  meant  the  failure  of 
Christianity  in  its  mission  of  the  moral  regeneration  of 
mankind.  Instead  of  quickening  and  deepening  the 
conscience  of  the  individual,  the  Church  deadened  it, 
and  made  it  more  superficial  than  ever. 

The  awakening  from  this  moral  torpor  was  the  re- 
birth of  the  individual.  The  break-down  of  Mediaeval- 
ism  is  contemporaneous  with,  and  causally  related  to, 
the  break-down  of  Realism,  or  the  belief  in  the  uni- 
versal. The  Reformation  is  one  phase  of  the  triumph 
of  Nominalism,  or  the  belief  in  the  individual.  The 
metaphysical  doctrine  of  the  exclusive  or  primary  reality 
of  the  individual  finds  practical  expression,  moral  and  re- 
ligious, in  the  assertion  by  the  individual  of  his  right  to 
be  his  own  judge  in  matters  of  conduct  and  of  thought, 
in  the  new  sense  of  the  importance  of  conduct  and 
character,  in  the  revival  of  interest  in  the  secular  life 
and  the  affairs  of  this  world.  The  Protestant  version 
of  Christianity,  indeed,  so  emphasised  the  individual  as 

1  Cf.  James  Cotter  Morrison,  The  Service  of  Man,  ch.  vL 


330  The  Moral  Life 

almost  to  lose  sight  of  the  social  significance  of  the 
Christian  religion  as  it  was  originally  taught  and  under- 
stood, and  to  make  it  the  servant  of  self-interest.  It 
has  only  been  very  slowly,  too,  that  the  mediaeval  view 
of  the  insignificance  of  the  earthly  life,  and  the  mediaeval 
tendency  to  an  ascetic  ideal,  have  been  exchanged  for  the 
modern  interest  in  the  present  world  and  in  the  total 
life  of  man  as  a  member  of  this  world.  The  turning- 
point  in  this  direction  was  the  Eenaissance,  the  re-birth 
of  the  pagan  spirit.  The  new  Socialism  and  Secularism 
of  the  present  is  mainly  the  result  of  the  new  pressure 
of  industrial  conditions. 

On  its  secular  side,  mediaeval  life  came  more  and 
more  under  the  control  of  the  feudal  system,  thus 
reverting,  Christianity  notwithstanding,  to  the  ideal  of 
the  military  State.  Here  again  the  individual  was 
entirely  subordinated  to  the  larger  whole  of  which  he 
formed  only  an  insignificant  part.  He  was,  more  or 
less  literally  and  absolutely,  the  servant  of  another,  and 
could  call  nothing  his  own.  The  feudal  society  was 
a  hierarchy,  into  whose  complex  system  the  life  of  the 
individual  must  be  fitted,  and  as  one  of  whose  functions 
it  must  be  regulated.  The  rise  of  industry  gave  the 
individual  a  new  importance  and  new  rights ;  inde- 
pendent competition  superseded  feudal  subordination, 
and  aristocracy  was  opposed,  if  not  superseded,  by  de- 
mocracy. The  rise  of  Capitalism  has  again  threatened, 
if  it  has  not  destroyed,  the  independence  of  the  indi- 
vidual ;  the  apparent  failure  of  Individualism  as  an 
industrial  principle  has  turned  the  world's  attention 
once  more  in  the  direction  of  Socialism ;  and  it  seems 
possible  that  the  individual  may  again  be  absorbed  in 
the  State.  Yet  we  can  see  in  the  entire  movement  a 
real  progress  ;  the  shadow  on  the  dial  does  not  turn 
backward,  history  does  not  repeat  itself.  It  is  of  the 
essence  of  progress  that  no  solution  of  the  problem  of 
life  is  final,  and  that  one  extreme  provokes  a  recoil  to 


Moral  Progress  331 

its  opposite.  But  it  also  belongs  to  the  nature  of 
progress  that  no  solution  will  satisfy  a  later  age  which 
does  not  do  fuller  justice  to,  and  rest  upon  a  better 
understanding  of,  the  individual  than  any  previous  solu- 
tion ;  and  that,  as  the  individual  advances  in  the  under- 
standing of  his  own  nature  and  of  his  relations  to  the 
social  whole,  the  problem  of  adequately  interpreting  that 
nature  and  those  relations  must  become  more  complex. 

The  trend  of  moral  progress  has  been  in  the  direction 
of  a  true  Individualism :  it  has  meant  the  gradual  dis- 
covery of  the  place  of  the  individual  in  the  body  politic. 
The  system  of  caste  has  gradually  given  place  to  the 
democratic  system ;  the  artisan  and  the  slave  have  been 
admitted  to  the  status  of  citizenship,  and  given  a  share 
in  the  government  of  the  State.  Yet  while  political 
disabilities  have  been  removed,  social  disabilities  have 
not  always  disappeared  with  them ;  political  enfranchise- 
ment is  not  necessarily  social  enfranchisement.1  Class- 
distinctions  are  still  apt  to  hide  from  us  our  essential 
identity  as  human  beings,  and  the  man  behind  the 
citizen  is  not  yet  clearly  perceived.  There  are  many 
signs  that  this  veil  also  is  yet  to  be  drawn,  that  mutual 
recognition  and  respect  will  yet  supersede  mutual  dis- 
trust and  misunderstanding,  and  that  behind  the  inevit- 
able distinctions  of  avocation,  of  birth,  of  property,  of 
capacity,  each  will  yet  see  and  acknowledge  his  fellow- 
man. 

We  have  seen,  moreover,  that  the  mediaeval  conception 
of  Christianity  as  having  to  do  only  with  the  things  of 
eternity  and  not  with  those  of  time,  with  the  welfare  of 
the  spirit  only  and  not  with  that  of  the  body,  is  giving 
place  to  a  larger  conception  of  its  meaning  which  includes 
temporal  and  material  good.  Science,  too,  has  taught  us 
to  look  for  causes  everywhere,  and,  even  in  the  moral  and 
religious  life,  to  note  the  influence  of  environment.  This 

1  Cf.  MacCunn,  Ethics  of  Citizenship,  ch.  iv. ;  and  Kidd,  Social  Evolution, 
pp.  227-229. 


332  The  Moral  Life 

modern  scientific  view  is  obviously  leading  to  a  revision 
of  our  conception  of  '  charity,'  and  must  result  in  new 
manifestations  and  applications  of  the  Christian  principle 
of  love.  The  temporary  relief  of  poverty,  disease,  and 
distress  is  seen  to  be  inferior  in  ethical  value  to  the 
radical  cure  of  such  evils  by  the  removal  of  their  causes. 
A  new  sympathy,  more  intelligent  as  well  as  more  inti- 
mate, with  the  disfranchised  masses  of  our  vast  city 
populations,  whose  citizenship  is  no  more  real  than 
that  of  the  Greek  slave  who  was  encouraged  to  lay  no 
such  flattering  unction  to  his  soul,  is  leading  men  every- 
where to  an  anxious  consideration  of  the  ways  and  means 
by  which  these  masses  may  be  given  the  moral  opportunity 
to  which,  as  '  men  of  like  passions  with  ourselves,'  they 
are  entitled  no  less  than  we.  "We  are  slowly  coming  to  see 
that  they  do  not  exist  for  us  any  more  than  we  exist  for 
them ;  that  they,  no  less  than  we,  are  ends-in-themselves 
and  have  a  destiny  of  their  own.  Such  a  development 
and  education  of  social  sympathy  is  only  a  further  step 
in  the  direction  of  the  discovery — behind  all  varieties 
of  class,  of  outward  condition,  and  of  special  avocation 
— of  a  common  moral  personality. 

3.  Aspects  of  the  law  of  moral  progress  :  (a) 
Transition  from  an  external  to  an  internal  view. — 
Of  the  general  law  of  moral  progress,  already  stated 
and  illustrated  in  its  general  bearing,  we  find  in  the 
history  of  morality  certain  more  specific  illustrations, 
to  the  chief  of  which  attention  may  now  be  called. 
The  growing  appreciation  of  the  individual  as  moral 
person  and  ethical  norm  is  manifested,  first,  in  the  in- 
creasing internality,  spirituality,  or  depth  of  the  moral 
consciousness  as  expressed  in  moral  judgment ;  secondly, 
in  the  gradual  subordination  of  the  sterner  to  the  gentler 
virtues ;  and  thirdly,  in  the  greater  and  greater  scope 
attributed  to  morality,  or  the  larger  and  larger  number 
of  persons  to  whom  its  application  is  extended. 


Moral  Progress  333 

First,  we  can  trace  in  moral  progress  a  gradual  tran- 
sition from  an  external  and  utilitarian  to  an  internal 
and  spiritual  estimate  of  action,  from  conduct  and  conse- 
quences to  character  and  causes,  from  doing  to  being,  from 
the  action  to  the  man.  With  the  growing  discovery  ot 
the  ethical  importance  of  the  individual,  we  find  taking 
place  a  corresponding  change  in  the  estimate  of  the 
comparative  importance  of  conduct  and  character.  What  l\ 
the  individual  does  counts  for  less  and  less,  what  he  is  ' 
counts  for  more  and  more.  When  it  is  perceived  that 
certain  types  of  conduct  are  the  expression  and  result  of 
certain  types  of  character,  a  higher  value  comes  to  be 
placed  upon  the  inner  character  than  upon  the  outward 
deed,  and  the  centre  of  moral  judgment  changes  from  the 
act  to  the  intention.  Virtue  or  excellence  of  character 
is  approved,  as  the  sure  guarantee  of  excellent  activity ; 
vice  or  baseness  of  character  is  condemned,  as  the  sure 
prophecy  of  base  activity.  Nor  is  a  man  judged  to  be 
courageous  or  honest  simply  because  he  does  a  courageous 
or  honest  deed.  The  courageous  and  the  honest  man  is 
seen  to  be  the  man  to  whom  a  cowardly  or  a  dishonest 
deed  is  unnatural  and  impossible.  Even  this,  however, 
is  only  an  intermediate  step  ;  and  once  the  emphasis 
is  shifted  from  conduct  to  character,  the  further  step  is 
easily  taken,  and  the  virtuous  character  comes  to  be 
valued  not  merely  as  the  security  of  the  corresponding 
activity,  but  for  its  own  sake.  "  Progress  with  regard 
to  the  standard  and  practice  of  virtue  means  the  gradual 
recognition  that  the  true  end  consists  not  in  external 
goods,  nor  even  in  the  virtues  as  means  to  these,  but  in 
the  virtues  as  ends-in-themselves." x  As  this  progress 
takes  place,  a  personal,  or  spiritual,  is  substituted  for  an 
impersonal,  or  utilitarian,  interpretation  of  human  life. 

How  slowly  and  with  what  difficulty  this  advance  has 
been  made,  we  may  learn  from  the  case  of  the  gradual 
transition  from  the  Greek  to  the  modern  Christian  point 
1  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  §  246  (Summary). 


334  The  Moral  Life 

of  view.  The  utilitarianism  of  the  ordinary  Greek  con- 
science is  reflected  in  the  naive  doctrine  of  Socrates  that 
virtue  is  knowledge  of  the  consequences  of  our  actions 
— a  kind  of  '  hedonistic  calculus,'  and  even  in  Aristotle's 
conviction  of  the  dependence  of  human  happiness  or 
well-being,  for  its  completion  and  highest  perfection, 
upon  the  gifts  of  fortune.  From  such  statements  we 
should  be  compelled  to  conclude  that  the  good  is  finally 
in  nature's  hands  rather  than  in  our  own,  and  that 
virtue  is  to  be  valued  merely  as  a  means  of  making  the 
best  of  the  consequences.  Both  Socrates  and  Aristotle, 
it  is  true,  as  well  as  Plato,  strike  a  deeper  note,  signal- 
ising the  inherent  and  intrinsic  value  of  virtue,  and  sug- 
gesting the  Christian  estimate  of  character  as  the  only 
thing  absolutely  and  altogether  good.  But  the  Greek 
conception  of  citizenship,  as  an  exhaustive  expression 
of  the  moral  life,  tended  to  retard  the  advance  to  a 
strictly  spiritual  estimate  of  virtue.  As  long  as  the 
good  man  is  identified  with  the  good  citizen,  the  measure 
of  his  virtue  cannot  fail  to  be  his  utility  to  the  State. 
The  man  is  valued  as  a  political  instrument,  and  his 
character  is  regarded  only  as  a  guarantee  of  political 
service.  It  was  only  with  the  break- down  of  the  State 
itself  that  its  inadequacy  as  the  medium  of  the  moral 
life  became  apparent  to  the  Greeks,  and  men  sought 
within  themselves  the  good  which  they  failed  to  find 
without.  Then  came  the  conviction,  so  impressively 
set  forth  by  the  Stoics,  of  the  inherent  and  essential 
value  of  virtue  itself.  Not  what  a  man  is  good  for,  but 
what  he  is,  determines  his  ethical  value.  What  he  does 
is  worthy  of  approbation  or  of  condemnation  only  as 
the  expression  of  what  he  is,  as  the  action  is  worthy  or 
unworthy  of  himself.  The  Greeks  had  always  made 
much  of  obedience  to  the  laws  of  the  State,  but  out- 
ward conformity  had  seemed  to  them  a  sufficient 
obedience.  To  the  Stoics  the  only  true  obedience  was 
a  conformity  of  the  will,  and  the  law  that  claimed  such 


Moral  Progress  335 

self-surrender  was  the  expression  of  a  man's  own  rational 
nature. 

The  position  to  which  the  Greeks  were  only  brought 
at  last  by  the  dissolution  of  their  political  being  was 
the  starting-point  of  Christianity ;  the  lesson  which  the 
Greeks  taught  their  Roman  conquerors  was  the  first 
lesson  of  the  new  religion  to  its  disciples.  That  the  true 
criterion  of  virtue  is  an  internal  and  spiritual  one,  that 
consequences  are  morally  irrelevant,  that  the  true  salva- 
tion is  salvation  not  from  outward  but  from  inward  evil, 
that  the  true  obedience  is  not  that  of  the  lip  or  hand  or 
foot,  but  of  the  mind  and  heart,  that  neither  evil  nor 
good  happen  to  a  man,  but  that  both  are  the  creation  of 
his  own  will,  j that  righteousness  of  character  is  the  alpha 
and  the  omega  of  good,4— these  are  the  very  rudiments  of 
Christianity.  Rudimentary,  however,  as  these  principles 
are  for  the  Christian  consciousness,  they  were  themselves 
the  later  stages  of  a  long  and  difficult  moral  progress. 
It  was  only  very  slowly  that  the  Hebrew  mind  made 
the  advance  from  the  standpoint  of  conduct  to  that  of 
character,  and  learned  to  substitute  an  internal  and 
spiritual  standard  for  an  external  and  mechanical  one. 
A  legalistic  and  ritualistic  interpretation  of  righteousness 
was  always  their  besetting  sin.  They  were  in  constant 
danger  of  resting  satisfied  in  outward  conformity  to 
rules,  instead  of  requiring  of  themselves  an  inward 
obedience  to  principles,  and  they  were  always  measuring 
their  moral  attainments  by  the  national  prosperity  which 
rewarded  them,  rather  than  by  an  internal  standard. 
They,  too,  had  to  learn  the  distinction  between  moral 
and  material  good,  between  virtue  and  consequences, 
from  the  lips  of  a  cruel  experience.  To  them,  as  well 
as  to  the  Greeks,  political  disaster  brought  moral  eman- 
cipation, for  it  taught  them  also  to  seek  the  true  good 
within  and  not  without,  and  to  reverse  their  estimate 
of  righteousness. 

The  medieval  mind,  in  losing  sight  once  more  of  the 


336  The  Moral  Life 

individual,  fell  back  into  the  old  mechanical  and  ex- 
ternal view  of  the  moral  life,  and  sought  the  standard 
and  measure  of  moral  worth  in  external  conformity  to 
rule  rather  than  in  inward  conformity  of  spirit,  in  con- 
duct rather  than  in  character,  in  specific  acts  rather 
than  in  the  prevailing  attitude  of  the  will.  The  ec- 
clesiastical organisation  overshadowed  the  individual,  of 
whose  spiritual  life  it  ought  to  have  been  simply  the 
medium  and  expression ;  the  rule  supplanted  the  prin- 
ciple, the  letter  was  substituted  for  the  spirit,  the  means 
was  mistaken  for  the  end.  The  Reformation,  being  a 
reassertion  of  the  Christian  estimate  of  the  supreme 
importance  of  the  individual,  was  at  the  same  time 
a  return  to  the  true  inwardness  of  Christianity,  a  re- 
assertion  of  the  essentially  spiritual  character  of  its 
point  of  view.  The  Protestant  doctrine  of  'justifica- 
,/tion  by  faith  alone '  is  a  theological  application  of  the 
i  ethical  principle  that  the  moral  situation  hinges  not 
upon  what  a  man  does,  but  upon  what  he  is, — upon  the 
L  attitude  of  his  will  and  the  bent  of  his  character.  The 
Protestant  churches  themselves,  however,  soon  became 
the  victims  of  the  external  and  the  letter  in  a  new 
form,  substituting  bibliolatry  for  ecclesiolatry,  conformity 
to  the  letter  of  the  creed  for  spiritual  obedience,  doctrine 
for  life,  theology  for  religion.  In  our  own  time  we  see 
many  signs  of  a  return  to  the  moral  simplicity  of  early 
Christianity. 

The  modern  industrial  system  shows  the  same  tend- 
ency to  relapse  from  an  internal  to  an  external,  from  a 
personal  to  an  impersonal,  view  of  human  activity,  the 
same  tendency  to  lose  sight  of  the  moral  individual,  and 
the  same  necessity  of  the  recovery  of  the  individual  in 
his  true  ethical  importance.  The  development  of  com- 
merce and  the  organisation  of  society  upon  an  industrial 
basis  have  led  to  the  economic  estimate  of  human  worth, 
according  to  the  measure  of  the  individual's  efficiency  as 
a  part  of  the  economic  machine,  whether  he  be  producer, 


Moral  Progress  337 

distributor,  or  consumer,  labourer  or  capitalist.  Econo- 
mic value  is  so  prominent  and  so  important  to  modern 
society  as  well  as  to  the  individual,  that  it  is  apt  to  pass 
for  the  supreme  or  moral  value ;  the  '  economic '  man  is 
apt  to  be  mistaken  for  the  man  himself.  But  we  are 
coming  to  see  that  economic  value  is  an  '  abstract  idea/ 
that  in  reality  it  is  inseparable  from  moral  value,  and 
that  though  the  former  is  not  reducible  to  the  latter, 
the  one  is  dependent  upon  the  other.  The  '  economic 
man '  is  an  expression  of  the  moral  man,  as  truly  as  is 
the  '  political  man '  or  the  citizen. 

The  error  of  modern  as  of  ancient  and  mediaeval 
Socialism  is  that  it  regards  the  individual  as  a  thing 
to  be  managed  and  controlled  from  without,  rather  than 
as  a  person,  the  springs  of  whose  activity  are  within. 
It  is  forgotten  that  men  cannot  be  made  moral  by 
Act  of  Parliament,  that  men  cannot  be  made  moral  at 
all.  Moral  alternatives  are  resolved  into  alternatives 
of  outward  condition,  of  wealth  or  poverty,  of  comfort 
or  discomfort.  Environment  is  substituted  for  will, 
conditions  for  choice.  We  have  to  remind  ourselves 
that  "  the  only  thing  absolutely  and  altogether  good  is 
the  good  will,"  that  not  things  but  persons  alone  are 
good  in  themselves,  and  that  the  moral  situation  turns 
not  upon  external  conditions  but  upon  the  use  which 
the  moral  individual  makes  of  these  conditions.  Social 
regeneration  depends  upon  the  regeneration  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  regeneration  of  the  individual  depends 
upon  himself. 

4.  (&)  Subordination  of  the  sterner  to  the  gentler 
virtues. — A  second  manifestation  of  the  law  of  moral 
progress  is  found  in  the  gradual  subordination  of  the 
sterner  to  the  gentler  virtues,  of  the  virtues  of  being  or 
security,  to  those  of  well-being  or  amenity.  The  dis- 
covery of  the  individual  in  his  intrinsic  moral  worth 
brings  with  it  a  new  sense  of  the  individual's  moral 

Y 


338  The  Moral  Life 

claim,  of  his  right  to  consideration,  and  therefore  a  new 
consideration  for  him.  This  lesson  of  consideration  for 
the  individual  is  the  lesson  of  gentleness.  The  transition 
from  the  sterner  to  the  gentler  virtues  is  the  transition 
from  an  unsympathetic  to  a  sympathetic,  from  an  incon- 
siderate to  a  considerate,  attitude  towards  the  individual. 
The  approval  of  the  sympathetic  type  of  character  and 
conduct,  and  of  the  gentler  virtues  in  which  it  finds 
expression,  and  the  disapproval  of  the  opposite  type  of 
character  and  conduct  and  of  its  rougher  forms  of  virtue, 
has  become  for  us  an  instinct  and  an  intuition ;  we  can 
hardly  understand  the  possibility  of  any  other  estimate. 
Yet  this  also  is  a  lesson  of  moral  experience,  not  an 
innate  idea ;  and  it  has  meant  the  reversal  of  the  older 
preference.  The  history  of  moral  progress  is,  in  one 
aspect,  the  history  of  this  reversal.  This  phase  of  moral 
progress  is,  moreover,  immediately  connected  with  the 
preceding:  with  the  transition  from  an  external  to  an 
internal  view  conies  the  transition  from  an  unsympathetic 
to  a  sympathetic  attitude  towards  our  fellow-men. 

Both  the  primitive  and  the  pagan  forms  of  society 
are  predominantly  military,  and  the  forms  of  virtue 
which  they  chiefly  develop  are  accordingly  the  mili- 
tant forms.  The  same  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the 
family  which  now  produces  the  quiet  domestic  virtues 
was  forced  to  find  expression  for  itself,  in  a  ruder  age,  in 
the  physical  courage  and  cruel  deeds  of  the  battle-field. 
Primitive  man  has  no  country  or  home  to  be  the  hearth 
of  the  gentler  virtues ;  the  chase  fills  his  days  of  peace, 
as  attack  and  defence  are  the  occupation  of  the  rest. 

With  the  transition  from  the  nomadic  to  the  pastoral 
life,  we  have  the  beginnings  of  domesticity :  agriculture 
takes  the  place  of  the  chase,  and  becomes  the  nurse  of 
the  more  peaceful  virtues.  A  later  age  is  apt  to  look 
back  to  that  quiet  and  simple  life  in  the  bosom  of  nature 
as  the  golden  age,  and  to  endow  it  with  ideal  qualities 
which  make  it  a  very  garden  of  Eden  and  an  earthly 


Moral  Progress  339 

paradise.  Yet  the  later  stages  of  village,  town,  and  city 
communities  produce  forms  of  virtue  which  the  pastoral 
life  could  never  have  made  possible.  The  industrial  life 
is  no  less  peaceful  than  the  pastoral,  and  it  makes  de- 
mands upon  the  complex  nature  of  man  which  the  life 
of  the  fields  would  never  have  made.  The  business  of 
commerce  gives  a  new  sense  of  mutual  dependence  and 
mutual  service ;  and  under  its  influence  a  new  ideal  of 
well-being  is  gradually  substituted  for  the  old  ideal  of 
mere  security  from  attack.  Internal  development  suc- 
ceeds external  defence,  and  a  new  channel  is  found  for 
human  energies  in  the  organisation  of  the  community, 
whether  village,  town,  or  city.  The  foundations  of  gov- 
ernment are  laid,  old  customs  are  formulated  in  laws, 
and  a  new  sense  of  order  is  created.  The  State  itself 
has  come  into  being,  and  with  the  State  all  the  political 
virtues  begin  to  manifest  themselves.  The  political 
virtues,  again,  carry  the  domestic  in  their  wake,  and  the 
more  settled  and  peaceful  the  life  of  the  State  becomes, 
the  more  room  is  found  for  the  life  of  the  Family,  the 
peculiar  nursery  of  the  gentler  virtues. 

In  Greece  we  have  a  striking  illustration  of  the 
contrast  between  the  moral  influence  of  the  unsettled 
military  State  and  that  of  the  settled  industrial  State, 
in  the  rival  polities  of  Sparta  and  Athens.  The  Spartan 
type  of  virtue  has  become  proverbial  for  later  ages.  It 
found  no  place  for  the  gentler  and  more  amiable  qualities, 
and  comparatively  little  place  even  for  the  intellectual 
qualities.  Spartan  virtue  was  entirely  of  the  heroic  and 
fighting  order.  The  State  claimed  the  entire  manhood 
of  its  citizens,  and  disallowed  all  domestic  ties,  as  de- 
structive of  political  loyalty  and  fatal  to  the  virtues  of 
the  soldier -citizen.  The  typical  Athenian  citizen,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  the  embodiment  of  the  gentler  and 
humaner  virtues.  Excellence  was  measured  in  Athens 
also  by  the  standard  of  the  State,  but  the  State  itself 
existed  for  the  sake  of  the  harmonious  and  graceful  life 


340  The  Moral  Life 

of  its  citizens, — as  the  grand  means  of  their  intellectual 
and  aesthetic  culture.  Moreover,  the  industrial  basis  of 
the  State  was  recognised  by  the  political  status  conceded 
to  the  industrial  class,  which  was  in  Sparta  excluded 
from  citizenship. 

Yet  the  ancient  type  of  virtue  remained,  even  in 
Athens,  hard  and  virile,  as  compared  with  the  modern 
Christian  type.  The  gentleness  and  grace  of  the  highest 
forms  of  Greek  life  are  rather  the  qualities  demanded  by 
the  aesthetic  sensitiveness  and  by  the  extreme  intellec- 
tualism  of  the  Athenians  than  the  qualities  which  are 
reached  by  a  renunciation  of  the  sterner  and  rougher 
ideal  of  life.  And  when  Athenian  supremacy  gave  place 
to  Spartan,  and  Spartan  to  Roman,  the  career  of  the 
gentler  virtues  might  well  have  seemed  to  be  finally 
closed.  But  Rome  was  destined  to  be  overcome  by  a 
greater  power  than  that  of  arms,  the  power  of  gentle- 
ness itself.  Renouncing  the  old  political  and  military 
ideal  of  life,  and  proclaiming  itself  from  the  first  as  the 
religion  of  love,  as  the  gospel  of  forgiveness  and  non- 
resistance,  Christianity  breathed  a  new  life  into  the  body 
of  human  virtue. 

Perhaps  the  most  comprehensive  statement  of  the 
change  of  standpoint  wrought  by  Christianity  is,  that  it 
substituted  for  the  narrowly  and  exclusively  masculine 
ideal  of  the  ancient  world  an  ideal  which  not  only  in- 
cluded the  feminine  qualities,  but  made  the  specially 
feminine  virtues  typical  and  fundamental  —  the  very 
essence  and  presupposition  of  virtue.  While  the  classical 
moralists  are  obviously  thinking  of  man  rather  than  of 
woman,  in  their  efforts  to  formulate  the  ideal  life,  and 
the  classical  State  no  less  obviously  exists  for  man  and 
not  for  woman,  Christianity  taught  a  new  reverence  for 
woman,  because  it  found  a  higher  expression  of  certain 
essential  aspects  of  its  own  ideal,  especially  a  higher 
development  of  that  sympathy  which  it  regarded  as  the 
key  to  all  the  virtues,  in  womanly  than  in  manly  virtue. 


Moral  Progress  341 

The  Christian  reverence  for  childhood  is  only  another 
aspect  of  the  same  conception.  The  halo  of  a  tender 
grace  and  gentle  simplicity  encircles  childhood  and 
womanhood,  and  consecrates  them  the  eternal  types  of 
the  highest  human  virtue.  In  the  Master's  character 
and  life  the  Christians  saw  all  the  gentleness  and  sym- 
pathy of  woman  combined  with,  and  subduing  to  its  own 
beautiful  rule,  all  the  strength  and  wisdom  of  man. 

The  special  sphere  of  Christian  virtue  was  not  the 
battle-field  or  even  the  market-place,  but  the  ministry 
of  help  to  the  poor  and  the  sick,  the  forsaken  and  the 
oppressed.  Christianity  discovered  to  the  Western  mind 
"  the  sanctity  of  weakness  and  suffering,  the  supreme 
majesty  of  compassion  and  gentleness."1  All  forms  of 
cruelty  and  vain  display  of  mere  animal  strength  met 
the  rebuke  of  the  new  spirit  of  reverence  for  weakness 
and  scorn  of  unmitigated  strength,  which  had  been  born 
into  the  world.  "  The  high  conception  that  has  been 
formed  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life,  the  protection  of 
infancy,  the  elevation  and  final  emancipation  of  the  slave 
classes,  the  suppression  of  barbarous  games,  the  creation 
of  a  vast  and  multifarious  organisation  of  charity,  and 
the  education  of  the  imagination  by  the  Christian  type, 
constitute  together  a  movement  of  philanthropy  which  has 
never  been  paralleled  or  approached  in  the  Pagan  world."  2 

It  is  the  effect  of  this  change  of  standpoint  in  the 
estimation  and  determination  of  character  that  claims  our 
attention — the  new  measure  of  virtue  which  it  prescribes. 
"  Christianity  for  the  first  time  gave  the  servile  virtues  the 
foremost  place  in  the  moral  type.  Humility,  obedience, 
gentleness,  patience,  resignation,  are  all  cardinal  or  rudi- 
mentary virtues  in  the  Christian  character  ;  they  were  all 
neglected  or  underrated  by  the  Pagans." 3  The  superi- 
ority of  patient  endurance  to  angry  resentment,  of  for- 
giveness to  revenge,  of  gentleness  to  force,  was  impressed 

1  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii.  p.  100. 

2  Loc.  tit,  3  Op.  cit.,  vol.  ii.  p.  68. 


342  The  Moral  Life 

ineffaceably  upon  the  moral  imagination  of  Christendom 
by  the  life  of  its  '  meek  and  lowly '  Founder.  The  hier- 
archy of  the  virtues  was  henceforth  reversed :  the  first 
were  made  last,  and  the  last  first.  "  In  that  proportion 
or  disposition  of  qualities  which  constitutes  the  ideal 
character,  the  gentler  and  more  benevolent  virtues  have 
obtained,  through  Christianity,  the  foremost  place,"1 
while  the  sterner  and  more  virile  have  been  compelled 
to  accept  a  subordinate  position.  For  in  that  true  and 
complete  manhood  which  is  the  final  measure  of  human 
virtue,  the  gentler  virtues  are  the  essential  complement 
of  the  sterner,  and  the  sterner  must  be  subdued  to  the 
rule  of  the  gentler.  If  the  sterner  virtues  are  the 
hands  and  feet,  sympathy  or  love  is  the  eye  of  our 
moral  nature,  without  which  it  had  been  blind  to  that 
common  spiritual  being  which,  uniting  us  in  a  common 
life  with  our  fellows,  and  making  the  whole  world  kin, 
points  out  the  path  of  all  truly  virtuous  activity. 

5.  (c)  Wider  scope  of  virtue. — We  are  thus  led  to 
notice  a  third  phase  of  moral  progress,  its  increasing 
scope,  its  growth  from  particularism  to  universalism, 
from  patriotism  or  nationalism  to  humanism  or  cosmo- 
politanism. As  the  individual  comes  to  self-discovery, 
he  discovers  his  community  of  being  and  of  life  with  his 
fellows,  his  citizenship  in  the  city  of  humanity.  With 
the  discovery  of  the  true  and  total  self  comes  the  dis- 
covery also  of  the  true  relation  to  all  other  selves  :  a  true 
self-consciousness  is  at  the  same  time  a  consciousness  of 
others.  With  the  recognition  of  moral  personality  in 
new  and  unsuspected  places  man  learns  the  lesson  of  a 
larger  sympathy  and  a  wider  considerateness  in  his  rela- 
tions towards  others.  In  presence  of  this  deep  natural 
affinity,  artificial  and  conventional  barriers  disappear. 
This  phase  also  of  the  law  of  moral  progress  we  find 
illustrated  by  the  facts  of  moral  history. 

1  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii.  p.  101. 


Moral  Progress  343 

As  the  moral  life  of  mankind  proceeds,  it  seems  to 
break  down  the  barriers  that  divide  man  from  man,  the 
barriers  of  nationality  and  race  as  well  as  those  of  birth 
and  occupation.  We  have  already  seen  how,  in  its  very 
beginnings,  that  life  is  social  and  not  merely  indi- 
vidual, altruistic  as  well  as  egoistic.  But  the  primi- 
tive society  is  very  circumscribed  in  area,  being  limited 
to  the  family  or  the  tribe.  The  law  of  its  conduct  is 
external  enmity  as  well  as  internal  amity;  and  com- 
paring the  respective  areas  of  the  two  principles,  we 
must  say  that  enmity  is  the  rule,  amity  the  exception.1 
With  the  transition  to  the  village  community  and  the 
city- State,  we  find  a  great  extension  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness. But  the  essential  limitation  still  remains : 
natural  kindness  still  prescribes  duty,  the  stranger  and 
the  alien  is  still  regarded  as  a  barbarian  and  an  enemy. 

Of  the  ethical  limitations  of  the  particularistic  and 
patriotic  point  of  view  we  have  a  striking  illustration 
in  the  life  of  the  Greeks.  So  absolute  was  their  loyalty 
to  the  particular  city- State  of  which  they  were  citizens, 
that  not  merely  was  the  non-Hellenic  world  despised  as 
barbarian,  but  one  Greek  State  was  always  apt  to  see  in 
another  its  rival  and  its  foe.  It  was  this  inter-Hellenic 
enmity  that  prevented  the  Greeks  from  ever  becoming  a 
great  nation,  and  that  led  to  their  final  loss  of  political 
existence.  The  Greeks  seem  never  to  have  understood 
the  strength  that  lies  in  union ;  so  narrow  and  so  intense 
was  their  patriotism  that  it  blinded  them  even  to  their 
own  larger  and  more  real  national  good. 

The  Jews  resembled  the  Greeks  in  the  intensity  of 
their  national  consciousness,  in  the  undying  fervour 
of  their  love  of  country.  But  as  the  tribal  gave  place 
to  the  national  unity,  Hebrew  patriotism  grew  larger 
in  its  scope,  and  the  fortunes  of  Israel  as  a  whole 
became  the  engrossing  interest  of  every  true  Israelite. 
This  loyalty  to  Israel  was,  however,  at  the  same  time 

1  Cf.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics,  vol.  i.  p.  350. 


344  The  Moral  Lift 

an  attitude  of  hostility  to  all  other  nations.  Israel 
was  the  one  nation  that  represented  the  interests  of 
righteousness,  and  the  other  nations  were  Israel's  foes 
because  they  were  the  foes  of  the  righteousness  which 
she  represented.  Israel  alone  stood  in  the  divine 
favour,  she  was  a  '  peculiar  people,'  chosen  out  of  the 
nations  of  the  world  for  a  career  of  glory  by  God 
himself.  Her  destiny  was  the  ultimate  subjection  of 
the  world  to  her  sway. 

It  was  political  disappointment  and  disaster  that 
taught  both  Greece  and  Israel  the  lesson  of  a  larger 
loyalty,  as  it  taught  both  the  lesson  of  the  intrinsic 
worth  of  the  individual.  It  was  in  the  gloom  and 
despair  of  the  Exile  that  there  came  to  the  Hebrews 
the  larger  hope  of  a  glorious  destiny  for  humanity 
itself,  and  a  new  insight  into  their  own  function  in 
the  moral  redemption  of  the  world.  Weakening  one 
another's  power  of  resistance,  the  Greek  city -States 
succumbed  before  the  superior  strength  and  organisa- 
tion of  Rome.  But  the  autumn  of  her  decay  brought 
to  Greece  a  harvest  of  moral  insight,  a  breadth  of 
moral  outlook,  which  her  more  glorious  summer  of 
prosperity  had  never  yielded.  As  the  fair  vision  of 
the  Greek  State  faded  for  ever  from  his  eyes,  the 
Greek  saw  a  more  glorious  vision  still  —  the  city  of 
Humanity  itself,  whose  citizenship  was  more  precious 
than  that  of  any  Hellenic  State,  and  yet  was  limited 
by  no  distinction  of  race  or  city  or  nationality.  The 
grand  surprise  of  this  discovery  of  a  common  citizenship, 
nay  of  a  common  family  relation,  with  the  outside  bar- 
barian world,  still  speaks  to  us  from  the  pages  of  the 
Stoic  moralists.  What  is  perhaps  a  commonplace  of 
our  moral  consciousness,  was  to  them  a  discovery  and 
a  surprise. 

In  contrast  with  the  narrow  nationalities  of  the  past, 
the  Eoman  Empire  might  well  have  seemed  the  realisa- 
tion of  the  Stoic  dream  of  a  world-State.  Distinctions 


Moral  Progress  345 

of  Greek  and  Jew  were  lost  in  the  identity  of  Eoman 
citizenship :  the  ideal  of  national  was  exchanged  for 
that  of  universal  empire.  But  Eoman  citizenship  was 
found  by  the  subject-races  to  be  no  real  substitute  for 
the  loss  of  national  existence ;  such  a  cold  and  abstract 
relation  did  not  compare  with  the  warm,  concrete  life 
which  Greek  and  Jew  alike  had  enjoyed  in  the  narrower 
but  fuller  and  more  interesting  world  of  their  own 
nationality.  It  is  from  the  lips  of  a  Eoman  Emperor 
that  we  hear  the  saddest  commentary  on  the  real  insig- 
nificance and  utter  transitoriness  of  the  Eoman  Empire, 
and  the  profoundest  yearning  for  a  city  which  hath 
foundations,  whose  builder  and  maker  is  God.  The 
dream  of  the  City  of  God  is  still  unfulfilled :  its  empire 
is  vaster,  its  order  more  perfect,  its  sovereignty  more 
enduring  than  that  of  Eome. 

To  a  world  waiting  for  it,  to  men  in  whom  the  very 
disappointment  of  their  lower  ideals  and  narrower  hopes 
had  wakened  a  higher  ideal  and  a  larger  hope,  Chris- 
tianity came  with  its  gospel  of  divine  humanity;  its 
spirit  of  piety  to  a  universal  Father  took  the  place  of 
loyalty  to  a  world-Emperor,  and  its  principle  of  brotherly 
love  supplanted  that  of  a  common  citizenship.  The  con- 
ception of  the  Kingdom  of  God  superseded  that  of  the 
Eoman  Empire ;  men  were  filled  with  a  new  enthusiasm 
of  humanity,  as  the  idea  of  the  common  brotherhood 
of  man  took  possession  of  them.  Jew  and  Greek  and 
Eoman  each  saw  the  new  ideal  against  the  background 
of  his  own  national  experience,  and  recognised  in  it  the 
counterpart  of  his  own  highest  hopes.  In  the  fire  of  this 
new  enthusiasm  the  old  patriotism  was  consumed,  and  it 
seemed  as  if  the  foundations  of  the  spiritual  city  of  the 
Stoics  had  at  last  been  laid.  With  the  fall  of  the 
Eoman  Empire  and  the  rise  of  the  Christian  Church,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  old  ideal  of  the  State  and  of  political 
ethics  had  finally  died  out  of  the  world. 

But  the  necessity  of  organising  its  own  life  compelled 


346  The  Moral  Life 

the  Church  before  long  to  ally  itself  with  the  apparently 
superseded  State,  and  the  Eoman  Empire  was  revived 
under  the  name  of  the  Holy  Eoman  Empire.  The  Cath- 
olic Church  became  at  the  same  time  the  world-Empire, 
and  obedience  to  the  head  of  the  Church  was  at  the 
same  time  obedience  to  the  head  of  the  Empire.  Al- 
though it  recognised  no  distinctions  of  race  or  of  nation- 
ality, and  its  councils  were  oecumenical,  the  Church 
became  identified  with  its  visible  and  political  organisa- 
tion, and  the  larger  catholicity  of  the  Church  invisible 
was  lost.  The  ecclesiastical  State  was  more  universal 
than  any  State  the  world  had  yet  seen,  but  it  was  not 
yet  the  City  of  God.  That  city  was  invisible,  or  visible 
only  to  the  eye  of  the  spirit.  The  Eeformation,  while  it 
was  in  one  sense  the  assertion  of  individualism,  was  in 
another  sense  the  assertion  of  the  true  catholicity,  the 
catholicity  of  the  spirit,  against  the  particularism  of  the 
flesh  and  of  the  letter,  the  catholicity  of  the  invisible 
against  the  particularism  of  the  visible  Church. 

Amid  the  rise  and  fall  of  church  and  empire — for 
churches,  no  less  truly  than  empires,  have  their  rise 
and  fall — there  rises  slowly  in  the  human  spirit  that 
'city  of  God'  which  is  the  perfect  development  of  the 
human  spirit  itself.  To  the  building  of  this  city  the 
nations  and  the  churches,  like  individuals,  make  each  its 
peculiar  contribution,  and  the  work  survives  the  work- 
man in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  The  world  will 
never  outgrow  the  lessons  it  has  learned  from  the  nations 
of  the  past.  The  real  warfare  of  the  ages  is  a  warfare  of 
ideals,  and  in  this  warfare  the  victory  is  often  hidden 
from  the  outward  eye.  In  this  warfare  the  Greek  and 
the  Jew  conquered  the  Eoman,  and  the  Eoman  conquered 
the  northern  Barbarian.  In  the  very  hour  of  their  politi- 
cal death,  the  nations  of  the  past  left  great  spiritual 
legacies  to  their  successors,  and  made  their  conquerors 
their  debtors  and  their  subjects  for  evermore.  We  could 
not  afford  to  miss  out  of  our  modern  culture  the  Greek 


Moral  Progress  347 

sense  of  grace  and  courtesy  in  conduct,  the  Greek  rever- 
ence for  law  and  instinctive  '  obedience  to  a  better,'  the 
Greek  regard  for  the  things  of  the  mind,  the  Greek 
ideal  of  the  perfect  union  of  physical  and  spiritual  devel- 
opment, the  Greek  appreciation  of  '  music '  and  '  gym- 
nastic '  as  the  sum  of  human  education.  Nor  could  we 
afford  to  miss  the  sterner  and  more  solid  virtues  of  the 
Eomans,  whose  heritage  of  law  and  order  we  all  confess, 
and  the  searching  moral  sense  of  the  Hebrews,  with  its 
conviction  of  the  supreme  importance  of  righteousness. 
These  are  only  representative  instances  of  the  debt  which 
the  present  owes  to  the  past,  and  the  victorious  to  the 
conquered  nations. 

Between  nations,  as  between  individuals,  there  must 
doubtless  always  be  competition  as  well  as  co-operation, 
rivalry  as  well  as  love  and  mutual  service.  It  is  only 
through  the  struggle  for  existence  that  progress  is 
made,  and  the  worthier  sifted  from  the  less  worthy.  But 
the  rivalry  may  be  generous,  and  must  surely  become 
more  so,  if  we  remember  that  in  serving  our  country  we 
are  serving  humanity  itself,  and  that  we  cannot  truly 
serve  the  one  without  serving  the  other.  Modern  patri- 
otism ought  to  differ  from  the  patriotism  of  the  past  in  a 
larger  and  more  sympathetic  understanding  of  the  service 
which  our  own  country  is  called  to  render  to  the  world 
at  large.  To  think  thus  even  of  our  own  country  as  not 
the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  our  devotion,  but  rather 
as  the  representative  to  us  of  that  humanity  in  which 
alone  our  devotion  can  terminate  and  find  rest,  is  at 
once  the  true  patriotism  and  the  true  cosmopolitanism. 


Conclusion. — Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  later  does  not 
supplant  the  earlier  phase  of  virtue  ;  rather,  the  one  is  the 
needed  complement  of  the  other,  the  one  without  the  other 
cannot  be  made  perfect.  As  the  internal  does  not  negate 
the  external  view  of  virtue,  nor  the  sympathetic  the  more 


348  The  Moral  Life 

virile  virtues,  so  the  true  universalism  does  not  exclude 
but  includes,  and  is  the  expression  of,  the  true  individual- 
ism. If  moral  progress  consists  in  the  discovery  of  the 
true  individual,  then  moral  progress  can  never  leave  the 
individual  behind.  Whether  in  his  relations  to  others  or 
to  himself,  the  individual  can  never  be  called  upon  to 
negate  himself  as  moral  personality.  Sheer  and  absolute 
self-sacrifice  can  never  be  the  path  of  virtue  for  a  being 
the  supreme  principles  of  whose  life  are  self-knowledge 
and  self-realisation.  The  individual  is  the  moral  micro- 
cosm, and  he  need  never  go  beyond  himself  to  find  the 
universal.  The  fatal  error  of  mediaeval  Eealism  and  of 
that  Platonic  theory  of  which  Eealism  was  the  reproduc- 
tion, as  well  as  of  the  Neo-Platonic  and  all  other  forms 
of  Mysticism,  is  the  idea  that  the  only  pathway  to  the 
universal  is  the  negation  of  the  individual.  This  is  also 
the  fundamental  error  of  Stoic,  of  Neo-Platonic,  and  of 
Mediaeval  asceticism.  The  error  lies  in  supposing  that 
the  universal  alone  is  real,  and  the  individual  illusory ; 
while  in  truth  the  universal  apart  from  the  individual 
is  no  more  real  than  the  individual  apart  from  the  uni- 
versal. Scorn  of  the  individual  means  scorn  of  morality 
itself,  and  the  ambition  of  the  Mystic  has  always  been 
to  transcend  individuality  and  morality  alike.  Despite 
their  rationalism,  the  Stoics  were  essentially  Mystics  in 
spirit;  their  sage  is  very  like  the  mediaeval  saint.  The 
sage  and  the  saint  alike  despise  '  the  daily  round,  the 
common  task '  of  ordinary  duty ;  both  alike  have  set 
their  affections  upon  the  things  which  are  above  the  level 
of  ordinary  activity.  Their  interest  in  the  universal  and 
divine  saps  that  interest  in  the  individual  and  the  human 
which  it  ought  to  feed ;  and  the  result  is  that,  both  on 
the  individual  and  the  social  side,  the  springs  of  activity 
are  arrested,  and  life  becomes  a  dream,  an  untroubled 
reverie,  a  meditatio  mortis.  The  true  life  of  man  is  not 
a  self -less  life,  but  the  life  of  the  true  human  self; 
'  the  way  of  the  blessed  life '  is  the  way  along  which  the 


Moral  Progress  349 

human  spirit  has  so  long  and  so  laboriously  travelled, 
the  way  of  self -disco  very. 


LITERATURE. 

J.  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilisation. 

E.  B.  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture. 

H.  S.  Maine,  Ancient  Law. 

W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals. 

J.  Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  esp.  chs.  i.,  ii.,  vii.,  xxi. 

Julia  Wedgwood,  The  Moral  Ideal, 

W.  Wundt,  The  Facts  of  the  Moral  Life  (trans,  of  Etkik,  part  i.) 

H.  Spencer,  Principles  of  Ethics  (esp.  part  ii.) 

8.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  bk.  iii. 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  iii.  ch.  y, 

J.  H.  Muirhead,  Elements  of  Ethics,  bk.  v. 

T.  Fowler,  Progressive  Moi-ality. 


PART    III 

METAPHYSICAL    IMPLICATIONS 
OF    MORALITY 


METAPHYSICAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  MOEALITY. 


Introductory.  1.  Ethics  and  metaphysics. — We  have 
seen  l  that  while  the  science  of  ethics  must  be  carefully 
distinguished  from  metaphysics  or  philosophy,  yet  the 
science  of  ethics  must  have  for  its  complement  an  ethical 
philosophy  or  a  metaphysic  of  ethics.  Metaphysics  must 
endeavour,  here  as  elsewhere,  to  travel  beyond  the  scien- 
tific explanation  to  one  that  is  deeper  and  ultimate.  But 
here  as  elsewhere  we  are  met  by  the  agnostic  objection 
to  all  metaphysics.  We  are  asked  to  substitute  physics 
for  metaphysics,  positivism  for  transcendentalism,  science 
for  philosophy.  A  science  of  ethics,  it  is  urged,  is  all 
that  is  needful  and  possible.  Mr  Leslie  Stephen,  the 
'  apologist '  of  Agnosticism,  tells  us,  in  his  Science  of 
Ethics,  that,  in  his  opinion,  "it  is  useless  to  look  for 
any  further  light  from  metaphysical  inquiries."  His  de- 
mand is  for  ethical  realism,  which  means  for  him  ethical 
empiricism,  positivism,  or  phenomenalism.  Let  us  keep 
to  the  moral  facts  or  phenomena,  to  "  moral  reality,"  and 
not  seek  to  penetrate  to  its  transcendental  background, 
or  think  to  find  the  sanctions  of  human  conduct  in  the 
divine  or  the  ideal.  If  we  understand  the  inter-relations 
of  the  facts  of  the  moral  life,  we  shall  sufficiently  under- 
stand their  moral  significance.  Let  us  ascertain  "  the 
meaning  to  be  attached  to  morality  so  long  as  we  remain 

1  Introduction,  ch.  ii. 
Z 


354  Metaphysical  Implications 

in  the  world  of  experience ;  and  if,  in  the  transcendental 
world,  you  can  find  a  deeper  foundation  for  morality,  that 
does  not  concern  me.  I  am  content  to  build  upon  the 
solid  earth.  You  may,  if  you  please,  go  down  to  the 
elephant  or  the  tortoise."  *  It  is  not  necessary  "  to  begin 
at  the  very  beginning,  and  to  solve  the  whole  problem  of 
the  universe  "  before  you  "  get  down  to  morality."  "  My 
view,  therefore,  is  that  the  science  of  ethics  deals  with 
realties ;  that  metaphysical  speculation  does  not  help  us 
to  ascertain  the  relevant  facts.  .  .  .  This  is  virtually  to 
challenge  the  metaphysician  to  show  that  he  is  of  any 
use  in  the  matter."2 

This  challenge  the  metaphysician  need  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  accepting,  and  his  answer  to  it  will  consist  in  a 
careful  definition  of  the  ethical  problem  and  of  the  possible 
solutions  of  it.  That  problem  is  not,  What  are  the  facts 
or  phenomena  of  morality  ?  but,  How  are  we  to  interpret 
these  facts  ?  What  is  their  ultimate  significance  ?  The 
former  question  will  no  doubt  help  us  to  answer  the  latter ; 
knowledge  of  the  <}>vaig,  or  the  actual  nature,  will  lead  us 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  ovcria,  or  the  essential  nature  and 
meaning,  of  moral  as  of  other  facts.  We  must  admit  that 
the  empirical  and  inductive  method  has  its  rights  in  the 
ethical  as  in  all  other  fields  of  inquiry,  and  that  the  '  high 
priori  road '  is  a  road  that  leads  to  no  result  in  ethical 
any  more  than  in  natural  philosophy.  We  need  always 
the  instruction  of  experience ;  knowledge  lies  for  us  in 
an  unprejudiced  study  of  the  facts.  But  the  Baconian 
method  of  pure  induction,  or  mere  observation,  will  not 
serve  us  any  better  than  the  method  of  pure  metaphysical 
deduction.  The  low  posteriori  road  will  also  bring  us  to 
no  goal  of  knowledge.  It  is  never  mere  facts  that  we 
seek,  it  is  always  the  meaning  of  the  facts ;  and  the  ac- 
cumulation of  facts  is  never  more  than  a  means  towards 
the  attainment  of  that  insight  into  their  significance  which 
makes  the  facts  luminous.  Every  fact,  every  element  of 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  446.  2  Ibid.,  p.  450. 


Metaphysical  Implications  355 

reality,  carries  us  beyond  itself  for  its  explanation ;  if  we 
would  understand  it  we  must  relate  it  to  other  facts,  and 
these  to  others,  until,  to  understand  the  meanest,  slightest 
fact  or  element  of  reality,  we  find  that  we  should  have  to 
relate  it  to  all  the  other  facts  of  the  universe,  and  to  see  it 
as  an  element  of  universal  Reality.  In  the  perfect  know- 
ledge of  the  "  little  flower  .  .  .  root  and  all,  and  all  in 
all,  I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is."  Even  so  the 
lowliest  flower  that  grows  on  the  soil  of  human  life  is 
rooted  in  the  deeper  soil  of  universal  Reality,  and  is  fed 
by  the  sap  of  the  cosmos  itself.  The  controversy  between 
agnosticism  and  metaphysics  is,  therefore,  not  a  con- 
troversy between  realism  and  idealism,  between  science 
and  unscientific  philosophy.  It  is  rather  a  controversy 
between  a  narrower  and  a  wider  view  of  Reality,  between 
a  more  superficial  and  a  more  profound  interpretation  of 
the  facts.  The  distinction  between  science  and  philosophy 
is  not  a  distinction  of  kind,  but  only  of  degree.  Science, 
not  less  than  philosophy,  is  '  the  thinking  view  of  things': 
what  the  man  of  science  seeks  to  apprehend  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  facts.  And  the  philosopher  is  ambitious  to 
gather  from  the  hints  of  science  the  total  meaning  of 
the  facts.  Where  science  seeks  to  think  the  facts,  philos- 
ophy seeks  to  think  them  out.  Science  abstracts  certain 
elements  of  reality  from  the  rest,  in  the  hope  of  mastering 
these  elements  ;  but  always,  as  the  investigation  proceeds, 
it  is  found  that  the  mastery  of  the  elements  selected  for 
examination  implies  the  mastery  of  others,  and  the  mas- 
tery of  these  the  mastery  of  others,  until — even  from  the 
scientific  point  of  view — it  is  seen  that  a  perfect  mastery 
of  any  would  imply  the  perfect  mastery  of  all.  And  on 
our  journey  towards  this  '  master-light  of  all  our  seeing,' 
it  is  hardly  possible  to  say  where  science  ends  and  philos- 
ophy begins.  Metaphysics,  we  are  told,  is  '  a  leap  in 
the  dark.'  But  even  the  man  of  science  makes  his  leap 
in  the  dark,  his  leap  from  the  light  of  the  known  to  the 
darkness  of  the  unknown.  It  is  only  by  such  venture- 


356  Metaphysical  Implications 

someness  that  the  light  of  knowledge  is  let  into  the 
darkness  of  the  unknown,  but  not  unknowable.  Why 
should  a  limit  be  put  to  this  speculative  courage,  which 
is  at  the  root  of  all  intellectual  progress  ?  Why  should 
not  the  metaphysician  be  allowed  to  make  his  bolder 
leap  into  the  deeper  darkness  ?  The  darkness  is  thick 
indeed,  but  not  therefore  impenetrable.  At  any  rate,  "  it 
is  vain,"  as  Kant  says,  "  to  profess  indifference  to  those 
questions  to  which  the  mind  of  man  can  never  really  be 
indifferent." 

In  the  case  now  in  question,  the  metaphysician  only 
seeks  to  attain  a  more  intimate  and  exhaustive  knowledge 
of  moral  reality  than  the  scientific  moralist,  to  penetrate 
to  the  deeper  reality  of  moral  phenomena,  to  understand 
what  it  is  that  thus  '  appears,'  to  grasp  the  '  being '  of 
moral '  seeming.'  The  scientific  moralist  studies  morality 
in  abstraction  from  its  bearing  on  the  whole  theory  of  the 
cosmos.  His  ambition  is  to  discover  the  true  system  of 
the  moral  judgments ;  and  he  does  not  raise  the  question 
of  the  ultimate  validity  of  these  judgments  or  of  their 
relation  to  other  judgments,  intellectual  or  aesthetic.  But 
a  final  and  adequate  view  of  morality  itself  is  not  reached, 
a  satisfactory  explanation  of  morality  is  not  attained,  so 
long  as  we  separate  morality  either  from  nature  or  from 
God.  Eeality  is  one,  and  its  elements  must  be  seen  in 
their  mutual  relation  if  they  are  to  be  understood  as  in 
reality  they  are.  The  question  of  the  objective  and  ulti- 
mate validity  of  our  moral  judgments,  and  of  the  rela- 
tion of  these  judgments  to  our  other  judgments  of  value 
and  to  our  judgments  of  fact,  is  a  question  that  insists 
on  being  heard.  Ethics  is  therefore  finally  inseparable 
from  metaphysics,  and  it  needs  no  "  ingenious  sophistry  " 
to  "  force  them  into  relation."  If  we  would  reach  an 
adequate  interpretation  of  human  life,  we  must  place  man 
in  his  true  human  '  setting,'  we  must  discover  his  relation 
to  the  world  and  to  God.  The  meaning  of  human  life 
is  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  universe  itself,  the  moral 


Metaphysical  Implications  357 

order  is  part  of  the  universal  order,  the  ethical  process 
is  part  of  the  cosmic  process.  The  establishment  of  the 
superior  claims  of  the  positive  or  scientific  explanation  is 
itself  a  metaphysical  undertaking,  and  demands,  for  its 
successful  accomplishment,  a  comparison  with  the  tran- 
scendental or  metaphysical  view.  We  must,  in  any  case, 
test  the  metaphysical  possibilities  of  the  case,  before  we 
have  any  right  to  pronounce  against  metaphysics,  here  or 
elsewhere. 

To  investigate  the  metaphysical  basis  of  morality  is 
simply  to  go  from  the  outside  to  the  inside,  from  the  cir- 
cumference to  the  centre,  from  a  partial  to  a  complete 
view  of  the  ethical  problem.  If  all  questions  are,  in  the 
last  analysis  and  in  the  ultimate  issue,  metaphysical  ques- 
tions, the  ethical  question  can  least  of  all  escape  this  fate. 
Ethics  is  not  mere  anthropology.  To  interpret  the  life  of 
man  as  man,  we  must  interpret  human  nature,  and  its 
world  or  sphere ;  we  must  investigate  man's  place  in 
nature,  his  relations  to  his  fellows,  and  his  relation  to 
that  life  of  God  which  in  some  sense  must  include  the  life 
of  nature  and  of  man.  Man,  with  his  moral  life,  is  part 
of  the  universe ;  and  it  has  been  truly  said  that  it  is  really 
the  universe  that,  in  him,  is  interrogating  itself  as  to  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  moral  experience.  For,  in  the  moral 
world  no  less  than  in  the  intellectual,  experience  is  not  the 
last  word.  The  transcendental  or  '  metempirical '  ques- 
tion will  not  be  silenced  :  What,  in  nature,  man  and  God, 
in  the  universal  Eeality,  is  the  basis,  presupposition,  or 
sanction  of  this  experience  ?  We  must  distinguish  the 
scientific  or  '  relative '  ethics  from  such  a  philosophic 
or  '  absolute '  ethics.  But  the  scientific  must  in  the  end 
fall  within  the  philosophic,  the  relative  within  the  ab- 
solute ;  and,  short  of  a  metaphysic  of  ethics,  there  is 
no  final  resting-place  for  the  human  mind.  That  meta- 
physic may  be  either  naturalistic  or  idealistic.  On  the 
one  hand,  the  law  of  human  life  may  be  reduced  to  terms 
of  natural  law,  the  moral  ideal  may  be  resolved  into  the 


358  Metaphysical  Implications 

reality  of  nature.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  ultimate 
measure  of  human  conduct  and  character  may  be  found  in 
a  spiritual  order  which  transcends  the  natural ;  the  moral 
ideal  may  be  found  to  express  a  divine  Reality  to  which 
the  real  world  of  nature  would,  in  itself,  give  no  clue.  But, 
be  our  metaphysic  of  ethics  what  it  may,  metaphysics 
we  cannot  in  the  end  escape. 

2.  The  three  problems  of  the  metaphysic  of 
ethics. — The  central  or  metaphysical  principle  of  mor- 
ality— the  ultimate  presupposition  of  ethical  theory — 
assumes  different  aspects  when  we  examine  it  from 
different  standpoints  or  in  different  moral  lights.  The 
single  problem  presents  itself  for  solution  in  three  dif- 
ferent forms,  as,  according  to  Kant,  the  metaphysical 
problem  necessarily  does.  When  we  try  to  discover 
the  ultimate  warrant  for  our  ethical  interpretation  of 
human  life,  we  find  (1)  that  it  must  be  a  certain  inter- 
pretation of  man's  essential  being,  as  either  a  product  of 
nature,  sharing  nature's  life,  and  without  an  end  essen- 
tially different  from  that  of  the  animal  and  the  thing ; 
or  a  being  apart  from  nature,  with  a  being  and  a  life  in 
which  nature  cannot  share,  standing  in  a  different  rela- 
tion to  the  course  of  things,  and  possessed  of  a  unique 
power  to  order  his  own  life  and  to  attain  his  own  end,  a 
unique  capacity  of  failure  or  success  in  the  attainment  of 
his  life's  possibility.  In  other  words,  the  world-old  prob- 
lem of  human  freedom,  and  the  comparative  merits  of 
the  two  rival  solutions — libertarianism  and  determinism 
— inevitably  present  themselves  and  claim  our  considera- 
tion. (2)  We  cannot  help  asking  the  question  whether 
nature,  the  physical  cosmos,  is  a  sufficient  sphere  and 
environment  for  man  as  a  moral  being,  or  whether  it  is 
necessary  to  postulate  a  higher  and  supernatural  sphere, 
a  moral  order  other  than  the  physical  order,  a  moral 
Being  or  God  other  than  nature.  This  is  only  another 
aspect  of  the  first  question.  For  if,  on  the  one  hand,  we 


Metaphysical  Implications  359 

can  naturalise  the  moral  man,  or  resolve  man  (and  with 
him  his  morality)  into  nature,  then  there  will  be  no  call 
for  an  order  higher  than  the  order  of  nature,  or  for  a 
God  other  than  nature  itself.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
such  a  naturalistic  theory  of  man  is  impossible,  we  shall 
be  forced  to  postulate  a  universal  ethical  Principle  or 
Being,  answering  to  the  ethical  being  of  man.  Even 
then  the  relation  of  man  to  this  universal  Principle  or 
Being  will  have  to  be  determined, — a  problem  which 
will  be  found  to  be  only  the  problem  of  freedom  in 
another  aspect.  (3)  Last  of  all,  there  is  the  problem 
of  the  destiny  of  man  as  a  moral  being,  the  problem  of 
the  issues  of  the  moral  life.  Here,  once  more,  if  man 
is  a  merely  natural  being,  his  destiny  must  be  that  of 
nature ;  only  a  unique  being,  with  a  unique  life,  can 
claim  a  unique  destiny.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
found  impossible  to  resolve  man  into  nature,  and  neces- 
sary to  postulate  for  him  a  being  and  a  life  different  in 
kind  from  nature's,  and  an  ethical  universe  as  the  sphere 
of  that  life,  it  would  seem  to  be  necessary  to  the  fulfil- 
ment of  his  being  and  the  completion  (instead  of  the 
negation)  of  his  task,  that  he  should  have  an  immortal 
destiny.  Here  again,  however,  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem would  depend  upon  our  interpretation  not  only  of 
man's  relation  to  nature,  but  also  of  his  relation  to  God; 
and  both  these  interpretations  throw  us  back  once  more 
upon  the  question  of  the  essential  and  ultimate  nature 
of  man  himself. 


360 


CHAPTEE    I. 

THE    PKOBLEM    OF    FREEDOM. 

1.  Statement  of  the  problem. — After  what  has  been 
said  in  general  about  the  necessity  of  raising  the  meta- 
physical question  in  an  ethical  reference,  we  need  not 
further  attempt  to  vindicate  the  propriety  of  discussing 
the  problem  of  freedom.  That  problem  is,  like  the  other 
metaphysical  problems,  very  old,  but  not  therefore,  as 
some  would  say,  antiquated.  It  is  not  "  a  problem  which 
arose  under  certain  conditions,  and  has  disappeared  with 
the  disappearance  of  these  conditions,  a  problem  which 
exists  only  for  a  theological  or  scholastic  philosophy."1 
The  conditions  of  the  problem  are  always  with  us,  and 
the  problem,  therefore,  can  never  become  obsolete.  It  is 
one  of  the  central  questions  of  metaphysics,  or  rather,  it 
is  one  aspect  of  the  central  metaphysical  question ;  and 
though  its  form  may  change,  the  question  itself  remains, 
to  be  dealt  with  by  each  succeeding  age  in  its  own  way. 

For  us,  as  for  Kant,  the  problem  of  freedom  takes  the 
form  of  a  deep-seated  antithesis  between  the  interests  of 
the  scientific  or  intellectual  consciousness  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  moral  and  religious  convictions  of  mankind 
on  the  other. 

From  the  scientific  or  theoretical  point  of  view,  man 
must  regard  himself  as  part  of  a  totality  of  things, 
animals,  and  persons.  In  the  eyes  of  science,  human 

1  Paulsen,  Ethik,  vol.  i.  p.  351. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  3G1 

nature  is  a  part  of  the  universal  nature  of  things,  man's 
life  is  a  part  of  the  wider  life  of  the  universe  itself. 
The  universal  order  can  admit  of  no  real  exceptions ; 
what  seems  exceptional  must  cease  to  be  so  in  the  light 
of  advancing  knowledge.  This,  its  fundamental  postu- 
late, science  is  constantly  verifying.  Accordingly,  when 
science  —  psychological  and  physiological,  as  well  as 
physical — attacks  the  problem  of  human  life,  it  imme- 
diately proceeds  to  break  down  man's  imagined  indepen- 
dence of  nature,  and  seeks  to  demonstrate  his  entire  de- 
pendence. The  scientific  doctrine  now  prefers,  indeed,  to 
call  itself  by  the  '  fairer  name  '  of  determinism  ;  but  if  it 
has  the  courage  of  its  convictions,  it  will  acknowledge  the 
older  and  truer  name  of  necessity.  For  though  the  forces 
which  bind  man  are  primarily  the  inner  forces  of  motive 
and  disposition  and  established  character,  yet  between 
these  inner  forces  and  the  outer  forces  of  nature  there 
can  be  no  real  break.  The  forces,  outer  and  inner,  are  ulti- 
mately one ;  human  nature  is  part  of  the  nature  of  things. 
The  original  source  of  man's  activity  lies,  therefore,  with- 
out rather  than  within  himself ;  for  the  outer  force  is  the 
larger  and  the  stronger,  and  includes  the  inner.  I  get  my 
nature  by  heredity  from  nature  itself ;  and,  once  got,  it 
is  further  formed  by  force  of  circumstances  and, education. 
All  that  I  do  is  to  react — as  any  animal  or  plant  or  even 
stone  does  also  in  its  measure — on  the  influences  which 
act  upon  me.  Such  action  and  reaction  together  yield 
the  whole  series  of  occurrences  which  constitute  my  life. 
I,  therefore,  am  not  free — as  determinists  are  apt  to  insist 
that  I  am,  though  my  will  is  determined ;  motives  are, 
after  all,  external  forces  operating  upon  my  nature,  which 
responds  to  them,  and  over  neither  motive  nor  nature 
have  I  any  control.  I  am  constrained  by  the  necessity 
of  nature — its  law  is  mine ;  and  thus  determinism  really 
means  constraint.  The  necessity  that  entwines  my  life  is 
conceived,  it  is  true,  rather  as  an  inner  than  as  an  outer 
necessity ;  but  the  outer  and  the  inner  necessity  are  seen, 


362  Metaphysical  Implications 

in  their  ultimate  analysis,  to  be  one  and  the  same.  The 
necessity  that  governs  our  life  is  "  a  magic  web  woven 
through  and  through  us,  like  that  magnetic  system  of 
which  modern  science  speaks,  penetrating  us  with  a  net- 
work subtler  than  our  subtlest  nerves,  yet  bearing  in  it 
the  central  forces  of  the  world."  * 

The  distinction  between  the  new  '  determinism '  and  the 
old  '  necessitarianism '  has  been  finally  invalidated,  so  far 
as  science  is  concerned,  by  the  scientific  conception  of 
evolution.  Science  now  insists  upon  regarding  man,  like 
all  else,  as  an  evolved  product;  and  the  evolution  must 
ultimately  be  regarded  as,  in  its  very  nature,  one  and  con- 
tinuous. The  scientific  or  modern  fashion  of  speaking  of 
a  man's  life  as  the  result  of  certain  '  forces,'  into  which 
it  is  the  business  of  the  biographer  and  historian  to 
resolve  him,  is  no  mere  fashion  of  speech.  In  literal 
truth,  the  individual  is,  in  the  view  of  science,  the  child 
of  his  age  and  circumstances,  and  impotent  as  a  child  in 
their  hands.  The  scientific  explanation  of  human  life 
and  character  is  the  exhibition  of  them  as  taking  their 
place  among  the  other  products  of  cosmical  evolution. 
In  our  day,  accordingly,  it  is  no  longer  scientific  to 
recognise  such  a  break  as  Mill,  following  Edwards's  hint, 
insisted  upon,  between  outward  constraint  and  inward 
determination.  All  the  interests  of  the  scientific  ambi- 
tion are  bound  up  with  the  denial  of  freedom  in  any  and 
every  sense  of  the  word ;  its  admission  means  embarrass- 
ment to  the  scientific  consciousness,  and  the  surrender  of 
the  claim  of  science  to  finality  in  its  view  of  human  life. 

With  the  assertion  of  freedom,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
as  undeniably  bound  up  all  the  interests  of  the  moral  and 
religious  consciousness;  Kant's  saying  still  holds,  that 
freedom  is  the  postulate  of  morality.  The  moral  con- 
sciousness dissolves  at  the  touch  of  such  scientific  ex- 
planation as  I  have  just  referred  to.  The  determinist 
may  try  to  prop  it  up,  and  to  construct  a  pseudo-morality 

1  W.  Pater,  The  Renaissance. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  363 

on  the  basis  of  necessity ;  but  the  attempt  is  doomed  to 
failure.  The  living  throbbing  experience  of  the  moral 
man — remorse  and  retribution,  approbation  and  reward, 
all  the  grief  and  humiliation  of  his  life,  all  its  joy  and 
exaltation — imply  a  deep  and  ineradicable  conviction  that 
his  destiny,  if  partly  shaped  for  him  by  a  power  beyond 
himself,  is  yet,  in  its  grand  outline,  in  his  own  hands,  to 
make  it  or  to  mar  it,  as  he  will.  As  man  cannot,  with- 
out ceasing  to  be  man,  escape  the  imperative  of  duty,  so 
he  cannot  surrender  his  freedom  and  become  a  child  of 
nature.  All  the  passion  of  his  moral  experience  gathers 
itself  up  in  the  conviction  of  his  infinite  and  eternal 
superiority  to  nature :  it  '  cannot  do  otherwise,'  he  can. 
Engulfed  in  the  necessity  of  nature,  he  could  still  con- 
ceive himself  as  living  the  life  of  nature,  or  a  merely 
animal  life,  but  no  longer  as  living  the  proper  and  char- 
acteristic life  of  man.  That  is  a  life  rooted  in  the  con- 
viction of  its  freedom ;  for  it  is  not  a  life,  like  nature's, 
'  according  to  law,'  but  a  life  '  according  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  law,'  or  in  free  obedience  to  a  consciously 
conceived  ideal. 

The  grand  characteristic  of  the  moral  life  of  man,  which 
forbids  its  reduction  to  the  life  either  of  nature  or  of 
God,  is  responsibility  or  obligation.  This  is  more  than 
expectation  of  punishment,  to  which  Mill  would  reduce 
it.  It  is  rather  punishability,  desert  of  punishment  or  of 
reward.  The  element  of  retribution  or  desert,  instead 
of  being  accidental,  is  essential  to  the  conception.  In  the 
common  human  experience  of  remorse  there  is  implied  the 
conviction  that  different  possibilities  of  action  were  open, 
and,  therefore,  that  the  agent  is  accountable  for  what  he 
did — accountable  not  necessarily  in  foro  externo,  human 
or  divine,  but  primarily  and  inevitably  to  himself,  to  the 
inner  tribunal  of  his  own  nature  in  its  alternative  possi- 
bilities. And  retribution  comes,  if  not  from  without, 
yet,  with  sure  and  certain  foot,  from  within.  Our  moral 
nature,  in  its  high  possibilities,  is  inexorable  in  its  de- 


364  Metaphysical  Implications 

mands,  and  relentless  in  its  penalties  for  failure  to  satisfy 
them.  To  say  that  the  actual  and  the  possible  in  human 
life  are,  in  the  last  analysis,  identical;  to  resolve  the 
'  ought  to  be '  into  the  '  is,' — would  be  to  falsify  the 
healthy  moral  consciousness  of  mankind. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  admission  of  the  full  claim  of 
that  consciousness  may  mean  the  surrender  of  metaphys- 
ical completeness  in  our  scheme  of  the  universe.  For  it 
means  the  recognition  of  a  spiritual  force  different  in 
kind  from  the  natural  or  mechanical,  and  therefore  the 
surrender  of  a  materialistic  monism  or  a  scientific  syn- 
thesis. It  means  also  the  recognition  of  a  plurality  of 
spiritual  forces,  and  therefore  the  surrender  of  such  a 
spiritual  or  idealistic  monism  as  would  exclude  that 
plurality.  It  may  even  mean,  as  Professor  James  insists 
that  it  does,  the  entire  abandonment  of  the  monistic  point 
of  view,  or  of  the  conception  of  a  "  block-universe."  The 
admission  of  free  personality  may  cleave  the  universe 
asunder,  and  leave  us  with  a  seemingly  helpless  pluralism 
in  place  of  the  various  monisms  of  metaphysical  theory. 
Such  an  admission  means  further  the  recognition  of  evil, 
real  and  positive,  alongside  of  good,  in  the  universe.  It 
may  therefore  mean  the  surrender  of  optimism,  philo- 
sophical and  religious ;  or,  at  any  rate,  it  may  force  us  to 
pass  to  optimism  through  the  '  strait  gate '  of  pessimism. 
All  this  darkness  and  difficulty  may  result  to  metaphysics 
from  the  recognition  and  candid  concession  of  the  de- 
mands of  the  moral  consciousness.  Nor  will  this  seem 
strange  when  we  remember  that  the  moral  problem  of 
freedom  is  just  the  problem  of  personality  itself,  which 
cannot  but  prove  a  stone  of  stumbling  to  every  meta- 
physical system : 

"  Dark  is  the  world  to  thee  ;  thyself  art  the  reason  why  ; 
For  is  He  not  all  but  thou,  that  hast  power  to  feel  ' I  am  I'  ?" 

2.   The    'moral  method.'  —  Recognising   these    diffi- 
culties, and  regarding  them  as  insuperable,  we  may  still 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  365 

accept  freedom  as  the  ethical  postulate,  as  the  hypothesis, 
itself  inexplicable,  upon  which  alone  morality  becomes 
intelligible.  This  is  the  'moral  method/  which  some 
living  thinkers  share  with  Kant.  The  method  or  stand- 
point has  received  a  brilliant  exposition  and  defence  from 
Professor  William  James,  in  a  lecture  on  "  The  Dilemma 
of  Determinism." ]  "  I  for  one,"  says  the  latter  writer, 
"  feel  as  free  to  try  the  conception  of  moral  as  of 
mechanical  or  of  logical  reality.  ...  If  a  certain  for- 
mula for  expressing  the  nature  of  the  world  violates  my 
moral  demand,  I  shall  feel  as  free  to  throw  it  overboard, 
or  at  least  to  doubt  it,  as  if  it  disappointed  my  demand 
for  uniformity  of  sequence,  for  example."  Insisting  upon 
the  integrity  of  our  moral  as  well  as  of  our  intellectual 
judgments,  and  especially  upon  that  of  the  "judgment  of 
regret,"  and  upon  the  equal  legitimacy  of  the  postulate 
of  moral  with  that  of  physical  coherence,  Professor  James 
thus  states  his  conclusion :  "  While  I  freely  admit  that 
the  pluralism  and  restlessness  [of  a  universe  with  freedom 
in  it]  are  repugnant  and  irrational  in  a  certain  way,  I  find 
that  the  alternative  to  them  is  irrational  in  a  deeper  way. 
The  indeterminism  offends  only  the  native  absolutism  of 
my  intellect — an  absolutism  which,  after  all,  perhaps 
deserves  to  be  snubbed  and  kept  in  check.  But  the 
determinism  .  .  .  violates  my  sense  of  moral  reality 
through  and  through." 

Now,  such  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  freedom  is, 
to  say  the  very  least,  a  plausible  one ;  but  let  us  note 
exactly  what  it  means.  It  recognises,  and  gives  a  new 
emphasis  to,  the  Kantian  antithesis  between  the  intel- 
lectual or  scientific  consciousness  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  moral  and  religious  on  the  other ;  and  the  solution 
offered  consists  in  an  assertion  of  the  rights  of  the  latter 
along  with,  and  even  in  precedence  of,  those  of  the 
former.  The  decision  in  favour  of  freedom  is  thus  a 
kind  of  "  moral  wager,"  as  M.  Eenouvier  has  well  called 
1  The  Will  to  Believe,  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  145-183. 


366  Metaphysical  Implications 

it;  the  odds  seem  to  be  on  the  side  of  morality,  and 
therefore  the  odds  are  taken.  And  probably  the  ques- 
tion is  generally  answered  on  some  such  grounds,  though 
not  so  explicitly  formulated.  The  philosopher  is  the 
man,  after  all;  and  the  stress  is  laid  on  the  one  side 
of  the  question  or  the  other,  according  to  the  temper 
of  the  individual.  One  man  feels  more  keenly  the 
disappointment  of  his  moral  expectation,  another  feels 
more  keenly  the  disappointment  of  his  intellectual  or 
scientific  ambition.  For  the  ethical  and  the  scientific 
temper  are  not  generally  found  in  equal  proportions 
in  the  same  man.  As  men  are  born  Platonists  or 
Aristotelians,  so  are  they  born  moralists  or  intellectu- 
alists,  men  of  practice  or  men  of  theory ;  and  this 
original  bent  of  nature  will  generally  determine  a  man's 
attitude  to  such  an  ultimate  question.  While  the  in- 
tellectualists  will,  with  Spinoza,  ruthlessly  sacrifice  free- 
dom to  completeness  and  finality  of  speculative  view, 
the  moralists  will  be  content,  with  Kant  and  Lotze, 
to  "  recognise  this  theoretically  indemonstrable  freedom 
as  '  a  postulate  of  the  practical  reason.' "  The  latter 
position,  if  it  confessedly  falls  short  of  knowledge,  is 
at  any  rate  entitled  to  the  name  which  it  claims  for 
itself,  that  of  a  "rational  faith";  it  is  a  faith  grounded 
in  the  moral  or  practical  reason.  Since  man  must  live, 
whether  he  can  ever  know  how  he  lives  or  not,  freedom 
may  well  be  accepted  as  the  postulate  or  axiom  of 
human  life.  If  moral  experience  implies  freedom,  or 
even  the  idea  of  freedom,  as  its  condition ;  if  man  is 
so  constituted  that  he  can  act  only  under  the  idea  of 
freedom,  or  as  if  he  were  free,  then  the  onus  probandi 
surely  lies  with  the  determinist.  It  is  for  him  to  make 
good  this  libel  upon  human  nature,  that  it  is  the  con- 
stant dupe  of  such  deep  delusion ;  as  it  is  for  the 
agnostic  to  make  good  that  other  libel  of  the  mere 
relativity  of  human  knowledge. 

But,  while  fully  recognising  the  merits  of  this  '  moral 


367 

method,'  and,  above  all,  the  intellectual  candour  which 
it  expresses,  must  we  not  seek  to  establish  freedom  upon 
some  higher  and  yet  more  stable  ground  ?  Kant's  anti- 
thesis still  remains  ;  can  it  not  be  overcome  ?  Is  it  not 
possible  to  exhibit  the  unity  of  the  intellectual  and  moral 
judgments,  and  thus  to  eliminate  the  subjective  element 
which  seems  to  cling  to  the  solution  just  referred  to  ? 
We,  and  our  life,  moral  as  well  as  intellectual  and  phys- 
ical, are  after  all  part  of  a  single  reality ;  moral  reality 
and  physical  reality  are  elements  of  a  real  universe.  The 
moral  consciousness  is  the  consciousness  or  expression — 
one  among  other  expressions,  conscious  and  unconscious 
— of  the  universe  itself.1  It  is  objective  as  well  as 
subjective ;  we  cannot  detach  the  moral  subject  and  his 
consciousness  from  the  universe  in  which  he  finds  his 
place  and  life.  The  conception  of  duty  or  oughtness, 
with  its  implicate  of  freedom,  is  not  an  artificial  pro- 
duct, or  a  foreign  importation  into  the  universe ;  it  is 
a  genuine  and  authentic  exponent  of  the  universe  itself, 
and  therefore  we  must  interpret  the  universe  in  its 
light.  Whatever  the  difficulties  which  the  moral  con- 
sciousness may  raise  for  the  metaphysical  intellect,  it  is 
of  right,  and  not  of  favour  or  of  choice,  that  its  utter- 
ance is  heard.  It,  too,  is  the  voice  of  reason — the  voice 
of  the  universal  reality  or  nature  of  things ;  and  the 
determinism  that  would  choke  its  utterance  or  treat  it 
as  illusion  and  'pious  fraud,'  is  a  libel  not  only  upon 
human  nature,  but  upon  the  universe  itself.  The  breach 
between  our  intellectual  and  our  moral  judgments  can 
be  only  apparent,  not  real  or  permanent.  Must  we  not 
then  continue  the  effort  to  achieve  their  reconciliation, 
and  to  understand  freedom  in  its  relation  to  so-called 
necessity  ?  Let  us  revise  both  conceptions  once  more,  to 
discover  whether  such  a  reconciliation  is  still  possible. 

3.  The  '  reconciling  project.' — It  has  always  been  the 

1  Cf.  Fouill^e,  L'Avenir  de  la  Metaphysique,  pp.  262  ff. 


368  Metaphysical  Implications 

ambition  of  the  determinists  to  show  that  there  is  no  real 
controversy  in  the  case,  that  all  the  difficulty  has  arisen 
from  a  misunderstanding  of  the  terms  employed  on  either 
side,  and  that  necessity,  rightly  understood,  does  not  ex- 
clude freedom,  rightly  understood.  This  reconciling  pro- 
ject is  as  old  as  Edwards,  with  his  distinction  of  the  free 
man  and  the  determined  will ;  but  its  greatest  advocate 
is  Hume.1  One  of  its  latest  and  not  least  persuasive 
advocates  is  Mr  Shadworth  Hodgson,  who  insists  that 
"  the  true  and  proper  meaning  of  freedom  is  freedom  as 
opposed  to  compulsion  ;  and  the  true  and  proper  meaning 
of  necessity  is  necessity  as  opposed  to  contingency.  Thus, 
freedom  being  opposed  to  compulsion,  and  necessity  to 
contingency,  there  is  no  antithetical  opposition  between 
freedom  and  necessity.  Determinism  maintains  the  uni- 
formity of  nature,  or  necessity,  as  opposed  to  contingency, 
not  to  freedom ;  and  therefore  "a  determinist  is  perfectly 
at  liberty  to  maintain  the  freedom  of  the  will."  2  Accord- 
ingly, while  "  indeterminism  imagines  a  freedom  apart 
from  necessity  .  .  .  necessity  is  the  inseparable  condition, 
or  rather  let  us  say  co-element,  of  freedom.  And  without 
that  co-element,  freedom  is  as  incapable  of  being  con- 
strued to  thought,  is  something  as  impossible  as  walking 
without  ground  to  tread  on,  or  flying  without  air  to 
beat."3  This,  Mr  Hodgson  further  maintains,  is  the 
only  freedom  that  interests  the  ordinary  man.  "  By  free- 
dom, whether  of  the  will  or  anything  else,  men  at  large 
mean  freedom  from  compulsion.  What  know  they,  or 
care  they,  about  uniformity  of  nature,  or  predestination, 
or  reign  of  law  ? "  The  ordinary  man  holds  both  ideas 
together — the  idea  of  the  freedom  or  non-compulsion  and 
the  idea  of  the  necessity  or  uniformity  of  actions ;  he 
realises  no  contradiction,  as  in  reality  there  is  none,  be- 
tween them.  The  debate  is  between  the  philosophers 
themselves,  and  has  its  source  in  the  ambiguity  of  the 

1  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding,  sect.  viii. 

2  Mind,  O.S.,  vol.  vi.  p.  111.  3  Ibid.,  vol.  v.  p.  252. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  369 

term  '  necessity.'  This  has  been  conceived  dynamically, 
or  as  a  force, — a  misunderstanding  which  has  arisen 
from  carrying  over  the  metaphorical  idea  of  law  into 
scientific  and  philosophical  thought.  In  reality,  whether 
applied  to  human  activity  or  to  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
law  means  simply  uniformity.  But  while  law  is  thus  the 
merest  abstraction,  and  "  incapable  of  operating  as  an 
entity,"  it  has  been  hypostatised  as  the  agent,  not  merely 
in  the  occurrences  of  nature,  but  also  in  the  process  of 
human  activity. 

In  such  argumentation  one  can  hardly  help  suspecting 
a  certain  sleight  of  hand ;  one  can  hardly  believe  that  a 
debate  of  this  kind  is  altogether  a  war  of  words.  And 
one  cannot  but  note  that  such  an  evaporation  of  the 
debate  into  the  thin  air  of  pure  verbiage  is  always  equi- 
valent to  its  settlement  in  favour  of  determinism.  The 
interpretation  of  necessity,  suggested  in  the  sentences 
just  quoted  from  Mr  Hodgson,  is  interesting  and  signifi- 
cant. It  indicates  that  the  complexion  of  the  question 
has  changed  considerably  since  the  classical  presentation 
of  it  by  Edwards.  Determinism  no  longer  takes  the  '  high 
priori '  road  of  the  older  necessitarians  ;  it  is  now  content 
to  follow  the  humbler  path  of  scientific  method.  Hume 
has,  once  for  all,  emptied  the  conception  of  '  necessity,'  for 
the  scientific  mind,  and  for  the  mind  of  the  empiricist  in 
philosophy,  of  all  suggestion  of  mystery  and  force ;  and  it 
would  seem  that  the  mere  uniformity  which  is  left  is  a 
very  innocent  affair,  and  quite  consistent  with  freedom. 
Yet  I  cannot  think  that  this  is  the  case.  Non-compul- 
sion is  certainly  one  element  in  the  notion  of  freedom, 
but  it  is  not  the  whole  notion.  If  it  were,  man  could  be 
called  free  only  in  a  sense  in  which  nature  also  is  free. 
For,  as  we  have  just  seen,  necessity  has  no  dynamical 
connotation,  even  in  the  sphere  of  natural  occurrences ; 
the  laws  of  nature  are  simply  the  uniformities  which  char- 
acterise the  behaviour  of  bodies.  But  there  is,  as  Pro- 
fessor James  insists,  an  additional  and  no  less  essential 

2  A 


370  Metaphysical  Implications 

element  in  the  notion  of  freedom — namely,  the  element 
of  contingency  or  chance.  Absolute  uniformity  would 
be,  no  less  than  compulsion,  the  negation  of  freedom. 
At  the  same  time,  this  paring  down  of  necessity  to 
mere  uniformity  is  a  certain  contribution  to  the  solution 
of  our  problem.  While  the  advocates  of  freedom,  in- 
stead of  giving  np  the  element  of  contingency,  must 
continue  to  contend  for  a  power  of  free  and  incalculable 
initiation  in  the  self,  we  can  yet  see  how  the  life  of 
freedom  may  be  realised  in  the  midst  of  mechanical 
uniformity ;  how  it  may,  so  to  speak,  annex  the  latter, 
and  use  it  in  its  own  interests.  In  a  narrower  sense 
necessity,  interpreted  as  uniformity,  may  be  called  "  the 
co-element  of  freedom."  As  Lotze  says,  "  freedom  it- 
self, in  order  that  it  may  even  be  thought  of  as  being 
what  it  aims  at  being,  postulates  a  very  widely  extended, 
although  not  an  exclusive,  prevalence  of  the  law  of 
causation."  But,  if  freedom  is  to  be  saved,  the  causal 
uniformity  must  not  be  all-inclusive ;  it  must  not  in- 
clude the  moral  self.  Uniformity  or  mechanism  may 
be  instrumental,  an  organic  element  in  the  life  of  the 
self;  but  the  supreme  category  of  that  life  is  freedom. 

4.  Definition  of  moral  freedom :  its  limitations. — 
The  preceding  considerations  make  necessary  a  revision 
of  the  conception  of  freedom  itself,  with  a  view  to  its 
more  exact  definition,  and,  it  may  be,  limitation.  Free- 
dom means,  we  have  just  seen,  contingency  ;  but  it  does 
not,  therefore,  mean  mere  and  absolute  indefmiteness  or 
caprice.  Certain  lines  are  laid  down  for  each  man,  in 
his  inner  nature  and  outward  circumstances,  along  which 
to  develop  a  character.  A  man  has  not  the  universal 
field  of  possibilities  to  himself ;  each  has  his  own  moral 
sphere.  This  is  determined  for  him,  it  is  the  'given' 
element  in  his  life.  Two  factors,  an  internal  and  an 
external,  contribute  to  such  determination.  The  internal 
factor  is  the  nature,  disposition,  or  temperament,  psycho- 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  371 

logical  and  physiological,  which  constitutes  his  initial 
equipment  for  the  moral  life.  The  external  factor  con- 
sists in  the  force  of  circumstances,  the  places  and  oppor- 
tunities of  his  life,  what  is  often  called  his  'environ- 
ment,' physical  and  social.  So  far  there  is  determina- 
tion ;  so  far  the  field  of  his  activity  is  defined  for  each 
man.  But  unless,  out  of  these  two  factors,  the  external 
and  the  internal,  you  can  construct  the  moral  man,  room 
is  still  left  for  freedom.  Its  sphere  may  be  determined; 
the  specific  form  and  complexion  of  the  moral  task  may 
be  different  for  each,  and  determined  for  each.  But  the 
moral  alternative  lies  within  this  sphere.  All  that  is 
necessary  to  constitute  it  is  the  possibility  for  the  man 
of  good  or  evil,  not  of  any  and  every  particular  form  of 
good  and  evil  They  may  take  any  form,  and  what 
form  they  shall  take  is  determined  for  the  individual, 
not  by  him.  But  the  choice  between  the  alternatives 
is  essentially  the  same  in  all  cases;  it  is  a  choice  be- 
tween good  and  evil,  and  that  choice  must  be  shown  to 
belong  to  the  individual  Inner  'nature  and  outward 
circumstances  are,  as  it  were,  a  raw  material  out  of 
which  he  has  to  create  a  character — a  plastic  material 
which,  like  the  sculptor,  he  has  to  subdue  to  his  own 
formative  idea. 

The  chief  moral  limitation  is  individuality.  It  is 
just  because  we  are  individuals  that  the  moral  ideal 
takes  a  different  complexion  for  each  of  us,  and  that 
no  man's  moral  task  is  exactly  like  his  brother's.  Yet, 
amid  all  the  variety  of  detail,  the  grand  outlines  of  the 
task  remain  the  same  for  all.  In  its  very  nature,  the 
task  is  universal ;  and  though  it  must  be  realised  in  a 
variety  of  concrete  particulars,  it  may  be  realised  ia 
any  particulars,  without  losing  its  universal  significance. 
For  each  man  there  is  an  ideal,  an  '  ought-to-be ' ;  for 
each  man  there  is  the  same  choice,  with  the  same  momen- 
tous meaning,  between  good  and  evil.  To  each  there  is 
set  fundamentally  the  same  task — out  of  nature  and 


372  Metaphysical  Implications 

circumstances,  the  equipment  given  and  the  occasion 
offered — to  create  a  character.  For  character  is,  in  its 
essence,  a  creation,  as  the  statue  is ;  though,  like  the 
statue,  it  implies  certain  given  materials.  What,  in 
detail,  character  shall  be,  in  what  way  good  and  in  what 
way  evil,  depends  upon  the  given  elements  of  nature 
and  circumstances ;  whether  it  shall  be  good  or  evil,  de- 
pends upon  the  man  himself.  Out  of  the  plastic  material 
to  create  a  character,  formed  after  the  pattern  of  the 
heavenly  beauty,  that  is  the  peculiar  human  task.  Is 
not  the  material  of  the  moral  life  essentially  plastic  ? 
Out  of  the  most  unpromising  material  have  we  not  often 
seen  surprising  moral  creations  ?  Just  when  the  task 
seemed  hardest,  and  came  nearest  to  being  impossible,  have 
we  not  sometimes  seen  the  highest  fulfilment  of  it  ?  And, 
with  the  most  promising  material,  do  we  not  often  see  con- 
spicuous moral  failure  ?  Must  we  not  admit  that  success 
or  failure  here  is  determined  ultimately  not  by  the  material, 
but  by  the  free  play  of  the  energy  of  the  self  ?  Ethical, 
if  not  psychological,  choice  implies  a  real  alternative. 

5.  The  resulting  metaphysical  problem. — It  is  the 
task  of  metaphysics  to  resolve  this  antithesis,  to  heal  the 
apparent  breach  between  the  scientific  and  the  moral 
consciousness,  to  mediate  between  their  seemingly  rival 
claims  and  interests.  Various  metaphysical  solutions  are 
possible.  It  may  be  that  the  scientific  (which  is  here  the 
psychological)  view  is  the  only  available  explanation  of 
human  life.  Should  that  be  so,  freedom  would  be  lost 
so  far  as  knowledge  is  concerned.  We  might  still,  of 
course,  adopt  the  agnostic  attitude,  and  say  that  the 
ultimate  or  noumenal  reality  is  here,  as  elsewhere,  un- 
knowable. But  to  insist  upon  the  finality  and  adequacy 
of  the  scientific  or  psychological  view  is  to  pass  beyond 
science,  and  to  take  up  a  philosophical  or  metaphysical 
position.  The  metaphysical  proof  of  freedom,  therefore, 
must  be  the  demonstration  of  the  inadequacy  of  the 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  373 

categories  of  science :  its  metaphysical  disproof  must  be 
the  demonstration  of  the  adequacy  of  such  scientific 
categories.  In  the  words  of  Mr  Shadworth  Hodgson : 
"  Either  liberty  is  true,  and  then  the  categories  are  in- 
sufficient ;  or  the  categories  are  sufficient,  and  then 
liberty  is  a  delusion."  Such  a  determination  of  the 
sufficiency  or  insufficiency  of  scientific  categories  is  the 
business  of  philosophy,  as  universal  critic.  A  negative,  as 
well  as  a  positive,  vindication  of  freedom  is  therefore 
possible — the  former  by  the  condemnation  of  the  cate- 
gories of  science  as  insufficient,  the  latter  by  the  provi- 
sion of  higher  and  sufficient  categories  for  its  explanation. 
Even  if  such  higher  categories  should  not  be  forthcoming, 
and  we  should  find  ourselves  unable  to  formulate  a  theory 
of  freedom,  or  to  categorise  the  moral  life,  we  might  still 
vindicate  its  possibility. 

That  the  problem  of  freedom  is  ultimately  a  metaphys- 
ical one,  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  all  deterministic 
theories  base  themselves,  either  explicitly  or  implicitly, 
upon  a  definite  metaphysic.  The  denial  of  individual 
freedom  is,  for  instance,  the  obvious  corollary  of  such  a 
pantheistic  metaphysic  as  Spinoza's.  Human  personality 
being  resolved  into  the  all-comprehending  divine  Nature, 
from  the  necessity  of  which  all  things,  without  exception, 
follow,  man's  conception  of  his  freedom,  and  of  his  result- 
ing importance  as  an  imperium  in  imperio,  is  explained 
away  as  an  illusion  of  his  ignorance,  destined  to  disappear 
in  an  "  adequate  "  knowledge  of  the  universe.  The  conse- 
quence is  strictly  logical.  If  I  am  not  a  person,  but 
merely  an  aspect  or  expression  of  the  universe  or  God,  I 
cannot  be  free.  The  life  of  the  universe  is  mine  also : 
freedom  can  be  predicated,  in  such  a  system,  of  God  alone, 
and  even  of  him  in  no  moral  sense.  Materialism,  again, 
carries  with  it  the  same  ethical  consequence.  If  matter 
is  every  tiling,  and  spirit  merely  its  last  and  most  com- 
plex manifestation,  once  more  freedom  is  an  illusion. 
Freedom  means  spiritual  independence ;  and  if  spirit  is 


374  Metaphysical  Implications 

the  mere  product  of  matter,  its  life  cannot  in  the  end 
escape  the  bondage  of  material  law.  The  evolutional 
metaphysic,  whether  of  the  biological  or  of  the  mechan- 
ical type,  also  obviously  binds  its  adherents  to  the  denial 
of  freedom.  Moral  life  is  interpreted  either  as  a  series 
of  adjustments  of  the  individual  to  his  environment,  or 
as  a  series  of  balancings  of  equilibrium.  In  neither  case 
is  room  left  for  freedom,  or  a  new  beginning. 

In  such  cases  as  those  just  indicated,  the  connection  of 
the  interpretation  of  human  life  with  the  general  meta- 
physical theory  is  obvious  enough.  The  connection, 
though  not  less  obvious,  has  not  been  so  generally  re- 
marked, in  the  case  of  the  '  psychological '  theory  of 
determinism.  This  theory  has  been  chiefly  studied  in 
the  form  given  to  it  by  Mill,  and  in  that  form  the  par- 
allel between  the  metaphysical  sensationalism  and  the 
ethical  determinism  is  easily  detected.  The  theory  was 
originally  stated,  however,  by  Hume,  and  its  logical  de- 
pendence upon  his  philosophical  empiricism  or  sensation- 
alism is  no  less  evident.  If  I  am  resolvable  into  the  series 
of  my  conscious  states ;  if  I  am  merely  the  bundle  or 
mass  of  sensations  and  appetites,  desires,  affections,  and 
passions  which  constitute  my  experience ;  if,  in  short, 
my  existence  is  entirely  phenomenal, — then  the  pheno- 
mena which  are  '  me '  can  be  accounted  for,  or  refunded 
into  their  antecedents,  like  any  other  phenomena  which 
are  animals  or  things. 

Here,  then,  emerges  the  sole  possibility  of  a  metaphys- 
ical vindication  of  freedom — namely,  in  another  than  the 
Humian,  empirical,  or  '  psychological '  account  of  the 
moral  person  or  self.  The  nature  of  the  self  is  a  meta- 
physical question,  and  must  be  investigated  as  such  ;  it  is 
not  to  be  taken  for  granted  on  the  empirical  or  sensation- 
alistic  side.  There  is  another  alternative  account,  the  tran- 
scendental or  idealistic — namely,  that  the  self,  so  far  from 
being  equivalent  to  the  sum  of  its  particular  experiences 
or  feelings,  is  their  permanent  subject  and  presupposition. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  375 

Thus  the  central  problem  of  morality  is  seen  to  be,  like 
the  central  problem  of  knowledge,  the  nature  and  function 
of  the  self.  We  have  to  choose  between  an  empirical 
and  a  transcendental  solution  of  both  problems.  If,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  self  is  resolvable  into  its  phenomenal 
states,  if  these  exhaust  its  nature,  the  case  for  freedom 
is  lost :  these  states  determine,  and  are  determined  by,  one 
another  in  the  unbroken  nexus  of  antecedent  and  conse- 
quent. If,  on  the  other  hand,  such  a  resolution  of  the  self 
into  its  successive  experiences  is  impossible,  if  moral  expe- 
rience presupposes  at  each  stage  the  presence  and  opera- 
tion of  a  permanent  self,  the  case  for  freedom  is  made  good. 

6.  The  transcendental  solution.  —  That  the  latter, 
and  not  the  former,  is  the  true  statement  of  the  case,  has, 
I  think,  been  finally  proved  by  the  transcendental  analy- 
sis of  experience.  It  is  still  possible,  of  course,  to  rest 
in  the  scientific  or  psychological  view  of  moral  activity ; 
one  may  not  be  prepared  to  adopt  the  transcendental 
standpoint,  and  may  fall  back  upon  the  psychological 
or  empirical  view,  as  more  in  accordance  with  common- 
sense.  Moral,  like  intellectual  scepticism,  and  even  ag- 
nosticism, are  still,  even  after  Kant  and  Hegel,  intelligible 
attitudes  of  thought.  But,  unless  it  is  shown  that  the 
scientific  or  psychological  is  also  the  final  and  adequate, 
or  metaphysical,  view ;  unless,  that  is,  the  whole  self  is 
resolved  into  its  several  states  or  its  experience, — free- 
dom is  not  disproved.  Now  such  an  empirical  resolution 
of  the  self  is  as  impossible  in  the  moral  as  in  the  intel- 
lectual sphere;  the  phenomenal  or' empirical  view,  when 
offered  as  a  metapkysic,  is  at  once  seen  to  be  abstract  and 
inadequate.  To  understand  or  think  out  the  moral, 
equally  with  the  intellectual  life,  we  must  regard  the 
former  as,  like  the  latter,  the  product  of  the  activity  of 
the  self.  That  activity  is  the  heart  and  centre  of  the 
process,  from  which  alone  its  real  nature  is  recognised. 
Neither  the  moral  nor  the  intellectual  man  can  be  re- 


376  Metaphysical  Implications 

solved  into  his  experience.  It  implies  him ;  for,  as 
experience,  it  is  not  a  mere  series  or  sum  of  states,  but 
the  gathering  up  of  these  in  the  continuous  and  single 
life  of  an  identical  self.  If  determinism  is  to  be  estab- 
lished, all  the  elements  of  the  action  must  be  known  and 
observed  as  its  phenomenal  factors ;  but  the  source  of 
the  action  cannot  be  thus  phenomenalised.  Determinism 
gives  a  mere  dissection  or  anatomy  of  the  action.  Under 
its  analysis,  the  living  whole  of  the  action  itself  is  dis- 
solved into  its  dead  elements ;  the  constitutive  synthetic 
principle  of  the  ethical  life  is  absent.  That  principle  is 
the  self,  or  moral  personality,  to  which  the  action  must  be 
referred  if  we  would  see  it  as  a  whole  and  from  within. 
Motive,  circumstances,  temperament,  character — the  sev- 
eral parts  of  the  determinist  whole — all  imply  such  an 
activity  of  the  self,  if  they  are  to  enter  as  living  factors 
into  the  moral  situation.  And  the  self  which  is  shown  to 
be  the  source  of  this  original  and  formative  activity  is 
thereby  proved  to  be  free.  The  self  cannot  be  snared,  any 
more  than  the  spider,  in  the  web  of  its  own  weaving. 

The  transcendental  proof  is  essentially  the  same  in  the 
case  of  the  moral  and  the  intellectual  life.  It  is  the 
necessary  complement,  in  either  case,  of  the  empirical  or 
psychological  view.  For  the  previous  question  of  meta- 
physics or  '  first  philosophy  '  is  :  How  is  experience  itself 
possible  ?  Experience,  not  being  self-explanatory,  requires 
to  be  explained.  The  empirical  or  psychological  self  is 
not  ultimate,  but  only  phenomenal ;  we  must  therefore 
ask :  What  is  the  self  which  manifests  itself  in  these 
phenomena  or  states,  and  what  is  the  rationale  of  its  self- 
manifestation  ?  The  transcendental  answer  is,  that  the 
entire  process  of  experience  is  a  process  of  self-activity. 
The  psychologist  is  concerned  only  with  the  empirical 
process ;  his  business  is  to  establish  the  true  causal  con- 
nections between  the  antecedent  and  consequent  pheno- 
mena. But  if,  in  an  intellectual  reference,  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  presupposition  of  knowledge  is  a  constant 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  377 

activity  on  the  part  of  the  self  in  the  synthesis  of  the 
presentational  data,  that,  without  a  unifying  self,  the 
ordered  unity  of  experience  would  be  impossible,  it  is  no 
less  evident  that,  without  a  similar  synthetic  activity  on 
the  part  of  a  single  central  rational  self,  the  unity  of 
moral  experience  would  also  be  impossible.1  The  self 
weaves  the  web  of  its  own  experience,  intellectual  and 
moral.  Out  of  wants,  out  of  animal  promptings,  out  of 
the  provocations  of  sensibility,  the  self,  by  an  activity  of 
appropriation,  constitutes  motives  or  ends  of  its  own 
activity.  The  entire  process  of  motivation  takes  place 
within  the  circle  of  its  being,  and  is  conducted  by  itself. 
To  press  the  psychological  or  empirical  view,  and  to  insist 
that  the  scientific  interpretation  of  the  moral  life  is  the 
ultimate  and  sufficient  interpretation  of  it,  is  to  rest  in  a 
superficial  view  when  a  deeper  view  is  possible  and  neces- 
sary. The  empirical  or  phenomenal  self  may  be  regarded 
as  the  mere  sum  of  motive  -  forces,  of  tendencies  and 
counter -tendencies,  whose  resultant  describes  its  life. 
But  when  we  ask  what  a  motive  is,  we  find  that  it  is 
nothing  apart  from  the  self  ;  it  is  mine,  I  have  made  it.  I 
am  not  merely  the  subject  of  tendencies,  or  the  permanent 
deposit  of  tendency.  I  am  the  theatre  of  the  entire  pro- 
cess ;  it  goes  on  within  me. 

Hence  the  well-marked  limits  of  psychological  explana- 
tion. The  life  of  man,  which  is  in  its  essence  a  personal 
life,  is  regarded  by  psychology  as  an  impersonal  stream 
of  thought,  a  series  of  phenomenal  states  of  conscious- 
ness. But  metaphysics  must  correct  the  abstractness 
of  psychology,  as  it  corrects  the  abstractness  of  science 
generally,  and  must  re  -  view  the  moral  life  from  its 
personal  centre — from  the  standpoint  of  that  selfhood 
which,  as  unifying  principle,  is  not  to  be  phenomenalised, 
because,  without  its  constant  operation,  there  would  be 

1  The  parallel  between  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  activity  of  the 
self  is  strikingly  enforced  by  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  ii.,  and 
by  Professor  Laurie,  in  his  companion  volumes,  Metaphysica  and  Ethica. 


378  Metaphysical  Implications 

no  phenomenal  process  at  all ;  which  cannot  itself  be 
accounted  for,  or  explained,  by  psychology,  because  it  is 
presupposed  in  every  psychological  explanation. 

In  particular,  we  have  found  that  the  ethical  view  of 
life  is  the  personal  view  of  it.  Personal  behaviour  has 
ethical  significance :  impersonal  behaviour  has  none. 
The  psychological  or  impersonal  view,  even  of  morality, 
is  legitimate,  and  valuable  so  far  as  it  goes.  But  the 
final  explanation  of  morality  demands  that  we  view  it 
from  the  ethical  standpoint  of  personality,  which  we 
have  just  seen  to  be  also  the  inevitable  standpoint  of 
metaphysical  explanation  in  general.  Here  is  the  centre 
of  the  circle  whose  circumference  psychology  has  so  care- 
fully and  laboriously  described. 

7.  Difficulties  of  the  transcendental  solution  :  (a) 
psychological  difficulty  offered  by  the  presentational 
theory  of  will. — But  our  metaphysics  of  the  self  must 
be  based  upon  our  psychology  of  the  self;  and  serious 
difficulty  is  offered  to  the  transcendental  theory  by  a 
leading  tendency  of  current  psychology — the  tendency, 
namely,  to  adopt  what  Dr  Ward  has  called  a  "  presenta- 
tional "  view  of  the  self.  This  is-  the  view  of  those  who 
hold  that  we  can  have  a  '  psychology  without  a  soul.' 
It  is  insisted  that  we  must  not  predicate  the  existence 
of  a  hyper-phenomenal  reality,  in  the  mental  any  more 
than  in  the  physical  world ;  the  Ding-an-sich  is  equally 
unreal  in  both  cases.  The  real  is  the  phenomenal  or 
empirical,  that  which  can  be  observed  and  classified; 
and  what  we  do  observe  and  classify  is  not  '  the  soul ' 
or  any  '  pure  ego,'  but  simply  '  mental  phenomena '  or 
the  '  psychological  me.'  There  are  mental  events,  as 
there  are  physical  events ;  and  we  can  trace,  in  either 
case,  the  relations  of  antecedents  to  consequents  in  the 
series,  as  well  as  the  relation  of  the  one  series  to  the 
other.  Psychology,  as  a  '  natural  science,'  must  limit 
itself  to  the  phenomena  ;  and  its  success  in  accounting 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  379 

for  all  the  phenomena  without  the  hypothesis  of  a  soul 
or  self  as  their  '  place '  or  cause,  suggests  very  forcibly, 
if  it  does  not  prove,  the  superfluity,  even  for  meta- 
physics, of  such  a  hypothesis.  Entia  non  sunt  multi- 
plicanda  prceter  necessitatem,  and  it  seems  as  if  scientific 
psychology  had  taken  away  the  occupation  of  the  meta- 
physical '  self.' 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  maintained  that  we  cannot  know 
the  pure  ego,  the  identical  soul,  or  '  1,'  because  it  is  never 
presented,  it  never  becomes  part  of  the  content  of  con- 
sciousness. All  that  is  presented,  and  can  be  known, 
is  consciousness  itself — conscious  states  or  phenomena, 
the  empirical,  changing,  transient  ego,  or  the  '  me.'  What 
cannot  be  phenomenalised  cannot  be  known;  and,  ex  vi  ter- 
mini, the  pure  ego  or  transcendental  self,  as  the  condition 
of  all  phenomena,  is  itself  the  unphenomenal  or  non-pre- 
sentable. This  is,  of  course,  no  discovery  of  the  '  new ' 
psychology.  It  is  the  familiar  doctrine  of  sensationalism 
and  empiricism,  and  is  as  old  as  the  Sophists.  The  sole 
ascertainable  reality,  the  latter  held,  is  the  momentary 
sensation,  the  percipere  and  the  percipi.  Neither  subject 
nor  object  has  any  identical  or  independent  existence ;  the 
psychological  moment  is  the  only  certain  reality.  The 
Lockian  school  also  found  in  the  '  idea '  or  sensation  the 
only  certain  fact.  Berkeley  saw,  hardly  less  clearly  than 
Hume,  that  we  can  never  know  the  self ;  our  knowledge, 
he  holds,  is  confined  to  our  '  ideas '  (sensations  or  pre- 
sentations), and  we  can  never  have  an  idea  or  sensation 
of  the  self,  the  subject  of  all  ideas.  And  Hume  reported 
that  he  "  never  caught  himself  without  a  perception  ";  the 
only  self  he  caught  was  a  sensational  self,  the  only  psy- 
chical reality  was  the  sensation  of  the  moment.  When, 
therefore,  '  psychology  as  a  natural  science '  insists  upon 
objectifying  or  sensationalising  the  self,  and  refuses  to 
acknowledge  the  psychological  reality  of  a  self  which  can- 
not be  presented  or  phenomenalised,  it  is  only  carrying 
out  the  tradition  of  the  older  empirical  metaphysics. 


380  Metaphysical  Implications 

But,  further,  it  is  maintained  that  we  can  account  for 
the  only  self  there  is — for  the  empirical  ego,  or  the  psycho- 
logical '  me,'  without  invoking  the  hypothesis  of  a  tran- 
scendental and  pure  ego  or  '  I.'  The  '  me  '  is  self-explan- 
atory, and  calls  for  no  reference  to  an  '  I '  beyond  itself. 
Here  we  cannot  help  remarking  how  much  the  theory  has 
gained  in  plausibility  through  the  advance  of  scientific 
psychology.  This  has  revealed,  first,  that  the  presenta- 
tional series  is  a  continuum,  a  fluid  '  stream  '  rather  than 
a  rigid  '  chain '  of  sensations.  The  individual  presenta- 
tion is  not  an  isolated  point,  self-contained  and  self- 
sufficient  :  it  points  beyond  itself  for  the  apprehension 
of  its  own  reality ;  its  character,  both  qualitative  and 
quantitative,  is  determined  by  its  place  in  the  series  of 
presentations  or  the  '  fringe '  of  consciousness,  by  its  con- 
text or  setting.  The  mental  life,  as  empirically  manifested, 
is  not  discrete  and  atomic;  it  does  not  consist  of  isolated 
sensations  or  '  simple  ideas,'  but  is  in  its  very  nature 
continuous.  The  problem  of  synthesis  accordingly,  it  is 
claimed,  is  in  large  measure  solved  without  any  appeal 
to  a  transcendental  self  ;  with  the  surrender  of  the  atomic 
theory  of  consciousness,  and  the  acceptance  of  a  '  stream 
of  thought,'  the  problem  of  synthesis  ceases  to  be  a 
problem.  Secondly,  for  the  old  meagre  synthetic  prin- 
ciple of  simple  association  contemporary  psychology  sub- 
stitutes the  much  more  adequate  and  scientific  principle 
of  apperception  (in  the  Herbartian  sense)  or  '  systematic 
association.'  This  principle  provides  for  a  much  more 
intimate  connection  between  the  parts  of  the  mental  life 
than  that  of  mere  simple  association.  For  the  mechanical 
unity  of  the  latter  it  substitutes  an  organic  unity,  and, 
where  association  yielded  mere  aggregates,  apperception 
yields  wholes  or  systems.  Apperception  is  "  the  process 
by  which  a  mental  system  incorporates,  or  tends  to  in- 
corporate, a  new  element ; "  it  is  the  process  of  mental 
assimilation,  emotional  and  volitional  as  well  as  intel- 
lectual, by  which  not  merely  is  the  new  added  to  the 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  381 

old,  but  each  is  so  adjusted  to  the  other  that  the  new 
becomes  old  and  the  old  becomes  new.  Thus,  once  more, 
the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  mental  life  seem  to  be 
explained,  consistently  with  its  never-ceasing  change  alike 
in  form  and  content.  The  genesis  of  the  only  self  we 
know  seems  to  have  been  fully  accounted  for  on  purely 
empirical  principles. 

Yet  I  do  not  see  that  psychology  has  shown  cause  for 
discarding  the  transcendental  or  metaphysical  self.  On 
the  contrary,  such  a  hypothesis,  truly  understood,  seems 
to  me  to  be  the  necessary  implication  of  psychological 
science,  required  to  account  for  that  empirical  self  which 
is  its  subject-matter.  Without  the  '  I '  we  could  not  have 
the  '  me.'  For  what  is  the  basal  fact,  the  psychological 
unit  ?  What  is  any  and  every  mental  phenomenon,  as 
such  ?  It  is  certainly  not  a  pure  ego  or  a  '  self  without 
a  sensation ' ;  but  no  more  is  it  a  sensation  or  a  complex 
of  sensations  without  a  self  or  mind.  The  one  abstraction 
is  no  less  unreal  and  impossible  than  the  other ;  we  can 
no  more  separate  the  sensations  from  the  self,  than  the 
self  from  the  sensations.  Or,  to  use  Professor  James's 
terminology,  we  can  no  more  have  a  "  stream  of  thought " 
without  a  thinker  than  a  thinker  without  thought.  If, 
as  Hume  puts  it,  "  they  are  the  successive  perceptions 
only  that  constitute  the  mind  "  which  we  can  know,  it  is 
because  in  each  of  these  perceptions  "  the  mind  "  is  already 
from  the  first  contained.  The  fundamental  and  elemen- 
tary psychological  fact  is  not  consciousness,  but  con- 
scious mind,  or  mind  in  a  particular  state  of  conscious- 
ness. Consciousness  refuses  to  be  made  objective ;  it 
ceases  to  be  consciousness  so  soon  as  it  is  divorced  from 
the  conscious  subject.  The  psychological  unit  is  not 
percipere  or  percipi, — '  it  feels  '  or  '  it  is  felt,'  but  percipio, 
'I  feel.'  This  subjective  or  personal  reference  constitutes 
the  very  form  of  consciousness.  It  is  only  by  hypostat- 
ising  or  substantiating  '  experience '  or  '  consciousness,' 
by  making  the  phenomenal  unphenomenal,  that  the  case 


382  Metaphysical  Implication;: 

for  a  '  psychology  without  a  soul'  seems  plausible  at  all.1 
Hamlet  without  the  Prince  would  be  nothing  to  the 
drama  of  the  mental  life  without  a  mind.  In  this 
drama  there  is  only  -one  player,  but  he  is  a  player  equal 
to  every  part,  and  he  is  never  off  the  stage. 

We  have  only  to  consider  the  meaning  of  a  psycho- 
logical phenomenon,  to  see  the  necessity  of  this  sub- 
jective reference.  We  speak  of  '  conscious  states '  or 
'  states  of  consciousness,'  but  the  state  is  not  conscious 
of  itself;  it  is  a  state  of  my  consciousness.  Abolish 
me,  and  it  ceases  to  exist;  to  separate  it  from  the 
individual  mind  is  to  contradict  its  very  nature,  and 
to  destroy  it.  We  speak  of  '  mental  phenomena,'  and 
reduce  them  to  their  elements  of  presentation.  But 
what  is  a  phenomenon  that  appears  to  no  mind;  what 
is  a  presentation  that  is  presented  to  no  self?  The 
metaphysical  demand  for  a  subject,  as  well  as  for  an 
object,  of  consciousness  becomes  irresistible  as  soon  as 
we  realise  the  meaning  of  our  terms.  To  phenomenalise 
the  self,  to  objectify  the  subject,  to  reduce  the  I  to  a 
complex  of  presentations,  is  impossible,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  an  uuphenomenal  self  is  necessary  to  the 
existence  of  phenomena,  a  subject  which  cannot  become 
its  own  object  is  necessary  to  the  existence  of  objects, 
and  an  unpresented  I  to  the  existence  of  presenta- 
tions. "  Since  the  psychical  standpoint — the  standpoint, 
that  is  to  say,  that  the  psychologist  studies — is  the 
real,  if  not  the  logical  presupposition  of  the  physical, 
to  resolve  it  into  the  latter  is  tantamount  to  saying 
that  there  are  phenomena  that  appear  to  no  one,  objects 
that  are  over  against  nothing,  presentations  that  are 
never  presented." 2  The  impersonal  or  objective  view  of 
the  mental  life  is  thus  seen  to  be  self-contradictory  and 

1  Of  course,  no  criticism  of  the  standpoint  or  method  of  scientific 
psychology  is  here  intended.  It  is  only  when  psychology  is  offered  as 
metaphysics  that  the  criticism  indicated  in  the  text  becomes  legitimate. 

3  J.  Ward,  "'Modern '  Psychology:  a  Reflexion"  (Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  ii.  p. 
54). 


TJie  Problem  of  Freedom  383 

suicidal.  The  very  elements  to  which  it  would  reduce 
the  self  are  seen  to  imply  the  self;  the  empirical  or 
phenomenal  reality  stands  or  falls  with  the  reality  of 
the  transcendental  self.  The  psychologist's  refusal  to 
accept  the  reality  of  the  self,  like  the  phenomenalist's 
refusal  to  accept  the  reality  of  God,  rests  on  the  ground 
that  the  self,  like  God,  'does  nothing.'  The  answer 
is  the  same  in  both  cases.  It  is  because  the  self  in 
the  subjective  world,  like  God  in  the  objective,  in 
reality  does  everything  that  it  seems  here,  as  He 
seems  there,  to  do  nothing.  If  the  self  did  not  do 
everything,  if  it  were  not  present  in  every  presenta- 
tion, it  could  never  emerge  as  the  product  of  their 
aggregation.  To  say  that  it  could,  is  to  adopt  a  theory 
as~  unthinkable  as  the  theory  of  '  mind-stuff,'  to  beg  the 
question  as  baldly  as  those  -do  who  account  for  the 
mind  by  endowing  the  elements  out  of  which  they 
profess  to  manufacture  it  with  the  properties  of  mind 
itself.  No  combination  of  zeros  will  produce  a  number. 
When  we  pass  from  the  individual  presentation  or 
state  of  consciousness  to  the  unity  and  system  which 
characterise  the  mental  life,  from  the  problem  of  the 
individual  mental  state  to  the  problem  of  the  organi- 
sation of  the  several  states,  we  find  a  new  function  for 
the  unitary  self.  It  now  becomes  the  principle  of  unity, 
and  only  a  unitary  principle  can  unify.  The  reason 
which  explains  alike  the  continuity  of  the  states  and 
their  systematic  association  or  apperceptive  unity,  is 
the  same  reason  which  explains  their  existence  at  all, 
namely,  that  they  are  the  states  of  a  single  identical 
self.  Only,  the  self  which  we  have  so  far  regarded  as 
the  passive  spectator  or  mere  subject  of  the  presenta- 
tional states,  must  now  be  regarded  as  the  agent  that 
attends  to  and  selects  from  among  the  competing  pre- 
sentations, and  thus  organises  them  into  their  apper- 
ceptive wholes.  Without  this  activity,  we  cannot  explain 
the  organisation  of  the  mental  life ;  and  we  cannot  have 


384  Metaphysical  Implications 

the  activity  without  an  agent.  The  states  do  not  as- 
sociate or  organise  themselves ;  without  a  permanent 
organic  centre  of  unity,  organisation  is  impossible.  Ap- 
perception, like  the  old  simple  association,  implies  a 
mind  or  self  to  discharge  such  a  function.  Psychology 
may,  of  course,  confine  itself  to  a  statement  of  the  law, 
or  modus  opcrandi,  of  the  mind ;  but  an  ultimate  or 
metaphysical  explanation  must  take  account  of  the  mind 
itself,  as  the  source  of  that  activity. 

And  behind  apperception  there  is  attention.  With- 
out the  movement  of  attention,  apperception  would  be  a 
very  inadequate  principle  of  explanation.  The  systematic 
character  of  apperceptive  association  is  ultimately  due 
to  attention,  which  is,  therefore,  the  power  behind  the 
throne,  the  principle  which  explains  the  apperceptive 
system  itself.  For  it  is  the  movement  of  selective  atten- 
tion which  alone  explains  the  fact  of  the  superior  interest 
of  certain  points,  as  compared  with  other  points  in  the 
stream  of  thought;  without  it,  indifference  would  reign 
and  there  would  be  no  centres  in  the  mental  life.  "  We 
must  assume  that  the  unique  salience  and  dominance  of 
the  presentations  which  successively  occupy  the  focus 
of  consciousness  is  due  to  a  specific  process.  This  pro- 
cess must  be  called  attention."  *  The  tendency  towards 
'  mono-ideism '  seems  to  reside  in  the  ideas  themselves 
only  because  the  ideas  are  inseparable  from  the  mind, 
and  it  is  the  very  nature  of  mind  to  attend,  and,  by 
attending,  to  select.  The  relation  of  apperception  to 
attention  has  been  very  clearly  described  by  Mr  Stout : 
"  Every  presentation  which  is  attended  to  is  also  apper- 
ceived.  .  .  .  The  effect  of  attention  is  to  a  great  extent 
dependent  on  the  apperception  which  accompanies  it. 
Those  aspects  of  the  presentation  attended  to,  which  are 
congruent  with  the  appercipient  system,  acquire  special 
distinctness.  Others  pass  unnoticed.  The  physician  will 

1  G.  F.  Stout,  "Apperception  and  the  Movement  of  Attention"  (Mind, 
O.S.,  vol.  xvi.  p.  28). 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  385 

at  a  glance  detect  in  a  patient  symptoms  which  have 
escaped  the  anxious  scrutiny  of  friends  and  relatives. 
The  reason  for  this  does  not  lie  in  his  superior  power  of 
concentrating  attention.  He  is  able  to  note  what  they 
fail  to  note,  because  in  his  mind  an  apperceptive  system 
has  been  organised,  which  they  do  not  possess." l  Thus 
may  the  self  delegate  to  the  care  of  mechanism  that 
which  it  has  originally  itself  performed  by  an  effort  of 
attention.  But  the  work  must  originally  be  done  by 
the  self,  it  continues  to  be  superintended  by  the  self, 
and  at  any  moment  the  self  may  intervene  and  modify 
the  apperceptive  system. 

But  the  self  does  more  than  watch  and  connect,  it  is 
more  than  the  active  subject  of  presentations.  It  com- 
pares and  'comments';  the  vowc  is,  as  Plato  said,  the 
'  critic '  of  sensation.  Can  we  conceive  of  the  genesis  of 
such  a  '  commenting  intelligence  '  out  of  the  presentations 
themselves  ?  How,  on  the  theory  that  "  all  is  sensation, 
can  there  be  an  element  not  co-ordinate  with  sensation  "  ? 
Can  we  explain  how  the  "  particular  sensation  can  acquire 
a  wholly  new  kind  of  independence,  and  come  to  measure 
the  worth  of  other  sensations,  or  constitute  the  attitude 
in  which  they  are  '  apprehended '  ? " 

When  we  pass  from  the  intellectual  to  the  emotional 
and  volitional  life,  the  reality  of  the  subject,  and  the  im- 
possibility of  phenomenalising  it,  or  of  reducing  it  to  the 
object,  become  still  more  obvious.  It  is  indeed  to  the 
limitation  of  attention  to  the  cognitional  or  intellectual 
life  that  the  metaphysical  plausibility  of  a  '  psychology 
without  a  soul'  is  largely  due.  Wundt  has  rightly  charged 
contemporary  psychology  with  a  one-sided  intellectualism. 
And  Dr  Ward  has  persuasively  shown  that  while,  in  the 
intellectual  life,  the  subject  is  content  to  spend  its  entire 
activity  in  equipping  us  for  the  mastery  of  the  object,  in 
such  wise  that  its  own  existence  is  almost  inevitably  lost 

1  Ibid.,  p.  30. 

2  Ward,  " '  Modern'  Psychology :  a  Reflexion  "  (Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  ii.  p.  77). 

2  B 


386  Metaphysical  Implications 

in  the  vision  of  the  world  which  without  it  had  been 
impossible,  yet,  in  the  other  two  phases  of  its  undivided 
life,  a  no  less  exclusive  stress  is  laid  by  the  subject  upon 
itself.  It  is  in  the  emotional  and  conative  life  that  the 
ego  may  be  said  with  unmistakeable  emphasis,  and  in  the 
only  way  possible,  to  '  posit  itself.'  It  is  chiefly  because 
"  feeling  and  activity "  are  "  elements  irreducible  to 
cognition,  and  yet  part  of  the  facts,"  that  we  find  "  the 
antithesis  of  subject  and  object  to  be  the  very  essence 
of  the  science  "  of  psychology.  Feeling  and  activity  are 
"  always  subjective,  and  sensations  always  objective." 
Hence  "  the  duality  of  consciousness,  or  the  antithesis 
of  subject  and  object,  is  fundamental."  Only  the  ex- 
treme desire  to  make  psychology  a  '  natural '  or  '  ob- 
jective '  science  will  account  for  the  thoroughly  un- 
scieutific  simplification  of  the  mental  life  which  is 
accomplished  by  the  reduction  of  feeling  and  volition 
to  cognitional  elements.  Yet  this  is  what  the  pre- 
sentational theory  attempts  to  do.  The  fundamental 
unity  of  the  mental  life  is  to  be  found  not  in  the  object, 
but  in  the  subject — in  the  unitary  self,  the  elements  of 
whose  common  life  are  not  to  be  reduced  to  one  another 
and  without  it  would  have  no  organic  unity.  And  if,  in 
the  cognitional  life,  the  subject  seems  to  be  lost  in  the 
object,  in  feeling  and  in  activity  the  subject  becomes 
the  prime  reality. 

The  presentational  theory  of  the  self  is  followed 
out  to  its  further  consequences  in  the  '  automaton ' 
or  '  parallelism '  view  of  the  mind  and  its  relation  to 
the  body.  If  we  give  up  presentationism  and  maintain 
the  essential  activity  of  the  self,  we  must  abandon,  at  the 
same  time,  the  interpretation  of  the  mind  as  the  passive 
'  spectator '  of  '  concomitant '  physical  phenomena. 

8.  (&)  Metaphysical  difficulty  of  Transcendentalism 
itself. — We  must  now  turn  from  the  consideration  of 
the  difficulties  offered  by  psychology  to  the  transcen- 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  387 

dental  theory  of  freedom,  to  those  offered  by  meta- 
physics, and  inherent  in  the  transcendental  theory 
itself  as  that  theory  is  "generally  stated.  Transcen- 
dentalism, as  well  as  empiricism,  has  its  own  peculiar 
snares.  These  are  of  two  opposite  kinds,  illustrated 
by  the  Kantian  and  Hegelian  forms  of  the  theory  re- 
spectively. Kant,  by  making  absolute  the  distinction 
between  the  noumenal  or  rational  and  the  empirical 
or  sentient  self,  by  insisting  that  the  true  self,  of  which 
alone  freedom  can  be  predicated,  is  a  self  that  entirely 
transcends  experience,  gives  us  only  an  empty  and 
unreal  freedom.  Hegelianism,  on  the  other  hand,  by 
identifying  the  noumenal  and  phenomenal,  the  transcen- 
dental and  empirical  selves,  leaves  no  place  for  freedom, 
and  offers  for  our  acceptance  a  new  determinism.  This 
it  does  in  two  ways,  by  identifying  the  self  first  with 
the  character  or  experience,  and  secondly  with  God. 
Let  us  examine  in  turn  the  Kantian  and  the  Hegelian 
form  of  the  transcendental  theory. 

(1)  In  Kantianism,  an  empty  and  unreal  freedom. 
— Kant  sees  no  escape  from  determinism  except  by  re- 
moving the  ethical  self  out  of  the  empirical  or  psycho- 
logical sphere.  Within  the  latter  sphere  there  is  only 
necessity ;  and  here,  as  everywhere,  Kant  tries  to  save 
ethical  reality  by  disproving  the  real  validity  of  human 
knowledge.  Since  knowledge  is  only  of  the  pheno- 
menal and  not  of  the  noumenal  or  essential,  it  can 
never  solve  such  an  ultimate  problem  as  that  of  freedom. 
That,  so  far  as  we  know  it,  our  life  is  one  of  necessity, 
does  not  prove  that,  as  it  is  in  itself,  it  is  not  free.  And 
the  practical  reason  compels  us  to  "think"  or  postu- 
late that  freedom  which  the  speculative  reason  can  never 
"  know."  The  "  thou  shalt "  of  the  moral  law  which,  no 
less  truly  than  the  law  of  causation  itself,  issues  from  the 
depths  of  reason,  implies,  in  the  subject  of  it,  "  thou 
canst."  It  is  necessary,  therefore,  without  invalidating 


388  Metaphysical  Implications 

the  scientific  or  empirical  interpretation  of  our  life,  as 
made  from  the  phenomenal  standpoint  of  science,  to  ad- 
vance to  this  other  and  ethical  interpretation  of  it — an 
interpretation  no  less  valid  from  the  noumenal  standpoint 
of  ethics.  As  a  moral  being,  man  escapes  from  the  heter- 
onomy  of  nature  and  sensibility ;  as  a  rational  being,  he 
comes  under  reason's  autonomy,  and  is  free.  His  peculiar 
ethical  task  is  to  emancipate  himself  from  the  necessity 
of  the  life  of  sensibility,  and  to  appropriate  that  freedom 
which  belongs  to  him  of  right  as  a  member  of  the  king- 
dom of  pure  reason.  Thus  that  idea  of  freedom  which 
speculatively  is  but  "  regulative "  and  ideal  becomes 
practically  "  constitutive  "  and  real. 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  this  theory  does  not  vindicate 
actual  freedom.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  Kant  so  presses  the 
distinction  between  the  phenomenal  and  the  noumenal 
as  to  make  that  distinction  absolute.  In  my  noumenal 
nature,  or  in  myself,  I  am  free ;  in  my  empirical  or  phe- 
nomenal states,  I  am  not  free,  but  under  the  necessity  of 
nature.  This  is  hardly  better,  as  M.  Fouille'e  has  re- 
marked,1 than  to  tell  a  prisoner  that  outside  his  prison 
there  is  freedom,  and  that  he  has  only  to  think  himself 
outside,  to  realise  that  he  is  free.  We  are  confined  within 
the  prison-house  of  desire  and  passion,  of  sensibility  and 
motive-force,  and  the  only  life  we  know  is  that  of 
prisoners.  What  matters  it  to  us  that  there  is  freedom, 
if  we  cannot  make  it  our  own  ?  But  escape  we  cannot, 
without  ceasing  to  be  men;  our  very  manhood  is  our 
prison-house. 

But,  it  may  be  urged,  the  Kantian  freedom  is  the  true 
freedom  after  all,  inasmuch  as,  though  not  actual,  it  is 
yet  the  ideal  or  goal  towards  which  the  moral  man  is 
always  approximating.  But  even  regarded  as  an  ideal, 
it  is  but  a  one-sided  freedom,  as  the  life  of  duty 
which  realises  it  is  but  a  one-sided  life.  For,  according 
to  Kant's  view,  man  is  free  only  in  so  far  as  he  acts 

1  L' '  iZvolutionnisme  des  Idtes- Forces,  Introd.,  p.  76 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  389 

rationally,  or  without  impulse  of  sensibility;  in  so  far  as 
he  acts  from  impulse  or  even  with  impulse,  he  acts 
irrationally,  and  is  not  free.  Good  alone  is  the  product 
of  freedom,  evil  is  the  product  of  necessity.  But  freedom, 
if  it  is  to  have  any  moral  significance,  must  mean  freedom 
in  choosing  the  evil  equally  with  the  good ;  only  such  a 
double  freedom  can  be  regarded  as  the  basis  of  responsi- 
bility or  obligation.  Freedom  is  that  which  makes  evil 
evil,  as  it  is  that  which  makes  good  good. 

If  freedom  is  to  be  of  real  moral  significance,  it  must 
be  realised  in  the  concrete  life  of  motived  activity,  in  the 
apparent  necessity  of  nature,  which  is  thereby  converted 
into  the  mechanism  of  freedom ;  not  apart  from  this 
actual  life  of  man,  in  a  life  of  sheer  passionless  reason, 
which  is  not  human  life  as  we  know  it.  By  withdraw- 
ing it  from  the  sphere  of  nature  and  mechanism,  of  feel- 
ing and  impulse,  and  constituting  for  it  a  purely  rational 
sphere  of  its  own,  Kant  has  reduced  freedom  to  a  mere 
abstraction.  What  is  left  is  the  mere  form  of  the  moral 
life  without  its  content.  The  content  of  human  freedom 
can  only  be  that  life  of  nature  and  mechanism,  of  feeling 
and  impulse,  which  Kant  excludes  as  irrational.  The  self 
in  whose  freedom  we  feel  an  interest,  because  it  is  our  self, 
is  the  self  that  rejoices  and  suffers,  that  is  tempted  and 
falls,  that  agonises  also  and  overcomes,  this  actual  human 
self  and  not  another — a  self  of  pure  reason,  which,  if 
indeed  it  is  the  ideal  self,  must  remain  for  man,  as  we 
know  him,  a  mere  ideal. 

9.  (2)  In  Hegelianism,  a  new  determinism.  The 
self  =  the  character. — The  Hegelian  interpretation  of 
freedom  seems  to  me  to  be  defective  in  two  points,  and, 
in  consequence  of  these  defects,  to  give  us,  instead  of  a 
real  freedom,  a  new  determinism.  In  recoil  from  the 
absolute  dualism  of  the  Kantian  theory,  Hegelianism 
maintains,  first,  the  entire  immanence  of  the  self  in  the 
process  of  its  experience,  or  the  identity  of  the  self  with 


390  Metaphysical  Implications 

the  character ;  and,  secondly,  the  entire  immanence  of 
God  in  the  process  of  the  universe,  and  therefore  in  that 
of  human  life.  Both  positions  seem  to  me  to  negate 
moral  freedom. 

As  regards  the  identification  of  the  self  with  its  char- 
acter, we  have  the  following,  among  other,  explicit  state- 
ments of  the  late  Professor  Green.  "The  action  is  as 
necessarily  related  to  the  character  and  circumstances 
as  any  event  to  the  sum  of  its  conditions."  *  "  What  a 
man  now  is  and  does  is  the  result  (to  speak  pleonasti- 
cally,  the  necessary  result)  of  what  he  has  been  and  has 
done." 2  "  He  being  what  he  is,  and  the  circumstances 
being  what  they  are  at  any  particular  conjuncture,  the 
determination  of  the  will  is  already  given,  just  as  an 
effect  is  given  in  the  sum  of  its  conditions.  The  deter- 
mination of  the  will  might  be  different,  but  only  through 
the  man's  being  different."  3  Thus  the  identification  of 
the  self  with  the  character  results  in  a  new  version  of 
determinism,  no  less  absolute  than  that  of  the  empiricists 
themselves.  The  '  I '  is  once  more  identified  with  the 
'  me ' ;  the  refusal  to  acknowledge  any  extra-empirical 
reality  means  the  denial  of  freedom. 

The  only  way  to  save  freedom  would  seem  to  be  by 
maintaining  the  distinction  between  the  self  and  the 
character,  not  in  the  absolute  or  Kantian  sense,  but  in 
the  sense  that  while  the  self  is  what  in  its  character  it 
appears  to  be,  it  yet  is  always  more  than  any  such  em- 
pirical manifestation  of  it ;  that,  while  it  is  immanent  in 
its  experience,  it  also  for  ever  transcends  that  experience. 
The  alternative  is  not,  as  Green  states  it,  between  a  self 
which  is  identical  with  its  character  and  a  self  which 
stands  out  of  all  relation  to  its  character,  so  that  a  man's 
action  does  not  "  represent  his  character,  but  an  arbitrary 
freak  of  some  unaccountable  power  of  unmotived  willing,"  4 
and  that  "  I  could  be  something  to-day  irrespectively  of 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  112.  2  Ibid.,  p.  113. 

3  Works,  ii.  p.  318.  4  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  113. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  391 

what  I  was  yesterday,  or  something  to-morrow  irrespec- 
tively of  what  I  am  to-day." *  We  may  regard  the  self 
as,  through  its  character,  standing  in  the  most  intimate 
relation  to  its  experience,  and  yet  as  being  always  more 
than  that  experience,  and  in  this  '  more '  containing  the 
secret  of  its  moral  life.  Dr  Martineau  has  happily  ex- 
pressed this  view  by  calling  the  character  a  predicate  of 
the  self ;  the  moral  life  might  be  described  as  a  process  of 
self-predication.  The  predicates  are  meaningless  without 
a  self  of  which  they  may  be  predicated — nay,  without  a 
self  to  predicate  them  of  itself ;  apart  from  the  self,  char- 
acter is  a  mere  abstraction.  As  Professor  Upton  has  well 
put  it :  "  While  our  character  determines  the  nature  of  our 
temptations,  we  are,  I  believe,  clearly  conscious  that  it  is 
not  the  character,  but  the  self  which  has  the  character, 
to  which  the  ultimate  moral  decision  is  due.  In  every 
moral  crisis  of  a  man's  life  he  rises  in  the  act  of  moral 
choice  above  his  own  character,  envisages  it,  and  passes 
moral  judgment  on  the  springs  of  action  or  desire  which 
he  feels  present  within  him ;  and  it  is  because  a  man's 
true  self  can  thus  transcend  and  judge  his  own  character, 
that  genuine  moral  freedom  and  moral  responsibility  be- 
come possible  and  actual." 2  The  freedom  of  the  moral 
life  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  original  energy  of  a  self, 
the  measure  of  whose  activity  is  never  to  be  found  in  the 
history  of  its  past  achievements. 

The  Hegelian  identification  of  the  self  with  the  char- 
acter leads  us  back  to  determinism,  because,  by  a  kind  of 
irony  of  fate,  it  leads  us  back  to  empiricism  of  the  most 
unmistakeable  kind.  The  self  is  once  more  lost  in  its 
experience,  resolved  into  its  states.  At  most,  the  self  is 
conceived  as  the  principle  of  unity  of  its  states,  as  the 
form  of  its  experience  ;  and  even  then  the  unity  is  rather 
a  cognitional  than  an  ethical  unity,  the  essentially  dynam- 
ical character  of  the  moral  life  is  ignored,  the  volitional  is 
again  resolved  into  the  intellectual.  What  has  been  said 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  115.  *  New  World,  i.  p.  152. 


392  Metaphysical  Implications 

above,  in  answer  to  the  psychological  view  of  the  self, 
need  not  be  repeated  here,  in  answer  to  the  transcendental 
denial  of  its  reality  and  activity. 

The  self  =  God. — The  Hegelian  doctrine  of  the  im- 
manence of  God  in  man  leads  to  the  same  result.  His- 
tory, like  the  course  of  things,  is  a  logical  process,  the 
process  of  the  universal  reason;  in  the  one  case  as  the 
other,  the  real  is  the  rational,  and  all  things  follow  from 
the  necessity  of  the  divine  nature.  As  to  the  self,  it  is 
accounted  for  by  being  referred  to  the  absolute  Reality 
of  which  it  is  the  passing  manifestation.  If  the  biologi- 
cal and  mechanical  Evolutionists,  refusing  to  regard  the 
individual  self  as  ultimate  and  self-explaining,  trace  it 
to  a  past  beyond  itself,  and  see  in  it  the  highly  complex 
resultant  of  vast  cosmic  forces,  the  Absolute  Idealist,  see- 
ing in  the  universe  the  evolution  of  divine  reason,  finds 
in  the  life  of  the  self  the  manifestation  or  reproduction  in 
time  of  the  eternal  Self-consciousness  of  God.  There  is 
only  one  Self — the  universal  or  divine ;  this  all-embrac- 
ing Subject  manifests  itself  alike  in  the  object  and  in  the 
subject  of  human  consciousness,  in  nature  and  in  man. 
Both  are  God,  though  they  appear  to  be  somewhat  on  their 
own  account.  Obviously,  if  we  are  thus  to  interpret  man 
as  only,  like  nature,  an  aspect  of  God,  we  must  de-person- 
alise him  ;  it  is  his  personality  that  separates,  like  a  'middle 
wall  of  partition,'  between  man  and  God.  Nor  is  this 
conclusion  shunned.  Personality  is  explained  to  be  mere 
'  appearance ' ;  the  ultimate  Reality  is  impersonal.  This  is 
Mr  Bradley's  view.  "  But  then  the  soul,  I  must  repeat,  is 
itself  not  ultimate  fact.  It  is  appearance,  and  any  descrip- 
tion of  it  must  contain  inconsistency."  The  moral  life  is 
governed  by  two  "incompatible  ideals,"  that  of  self-assertion 
and  that  of  self-sacrifice.  "  To  reduce  the  raw  material  of 
one's  nature  to  the  highest  degree  of  system,  and  to  use 
every  element  from  whatever  source  as  a  subordinate  means 
to  this  object,  is  certainly  one  genuine  view  of  goodness. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  393 

On  the  other  hand,  to  widen  as  far  as  possible  the  end 
to  be  pursued,  and  to  realise  this  through  the  distraction 
or  the  dissipation  of  one's  individuality,  is  certainly  also 
good.  An  individual  system,  aimed  at  in  one's  self,  and 
again  the  subordination  of  one's  own  development  to  a 
wide-embracing  end,  are  each  an  aspect  of  the  moral 
principle.  .  .  .  And,  however  much  these  must  diverge, 
each  is  morally  good;  and,  taken  in  the  abstract,  you 
cannot  say  that  one  is  better  than  the  other."  1  "  Now 
that  this  divergence  ceases,  and  is  brought  together  in  the 
end,  is  most  certain.  For  nothing  is  outside  the  Abso- 
lute, and  in  the  Absolute  there  is  nothing  imperfect.  .  .  . 
In  the  Absolute  everything  finite  attains  the  perfection 
which  it  seeks ;  but,  upon  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  gain 
perfection  precisely  as  it  seeks  it.  For  .  .  .  the  finite  is 
more  or  less  transmuted,  and,  as  such,  disappears  in  being 
accomplished.  This  common  destiny  is  assuredly  the  end 
of  the  good.  The  ends  sought  by  self-assertion  and  self- 
sacrifice  are,  each  alike,  unattainable.  The  individual 
never  can  in  himself  become  an  harmonious  system. 
And  in  the  wider  ideal  to  which  he  devotes  himself,  no 
matter  how  thoroughly,  he  never  can  find  complete  self- 
realisation.  .  .  .  And,  in  the  complete  gift  and  dissipa- 
tion of  his  personality  he,  as  such,  must  vanish  ;  and,  with 
that,  the  good  is,  as  such,  transcended  and  submerged." 2 

After  such  a  frank  statement  of  the  full  meaning  of 
the  Hegelian  metaphysics  of  the  self,  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  argue  that  it  sacrifices,  with  the  freedom  of  man,  the 
reality  of  his  moral  life.  If  I  am  but  the  vehicle  of  the 
divine  self -manifestation,  if  my  personality  is  not  real 
but  only  seeming — the  mask  that  hides  the  sole  activity 
of  God — my  freedom  and  my  moral  life  dissolve  together. 
It  is  true  that  God  reveals  himself  in  me  in  another  way 
than  he  does  in  the  world ;  but  my  life  is,  after  all,  only 
his  in  a  fuller  manifestation,  a  higher  stage,  really  as 
necessary  as  any  of  the  lower,  in  the  realisation  of  the 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  414,  415.  2  Ibid.,  p.  419. 


394  Metaphysical  Implications 

divine  nature.  Such  a  view  may  conserve  the  freedom 
of  God ;  it  inevitably  invalidates  that  of  man.  If  man 
can  be  said  to  be  free  at  all,  it  is  only  in  so  far  as  he  is 
identical  with  God.  If  it  be  contended  that  just  here  is 
found  our  true  selfhood,  and  with  it  our  real  freedom,  I 
submit  that  this  view  of  the  self  means  the  loss  of  self- 
hood in  any  real  sense  of  the  term,  since  it  means  the 
resolution  of  man  and  his  freedom  as  elements  into  the 
life  of  God,  the  single  so-called  Self.  Thus  freedom  is 
ultimately  resolved  by  the  Transcendentalists  into  a  higher 
necessity,  as  it  is  resolved  by  the  Naturalists  into  a  lower 
necessity  :  by  the  former  it  is  resolved  into  the  necessity 
of  God,  as  by  the  latter  it  is  resolved  into  the  necessity 
of  nature.  Hegelianism,  like  Spinozism,  has  no  place 
for  the  personality  of  man,  and  his  proper  life  as  man. 
Equally  with  Naturalism,  such  an  Absolute  Idealism 
makes  of  man  a  mere  term  in  the  necessary  evolution  of 
the  universe,  a  term  which,  though  higher,  is  no  less 
necessary  in  its  sequence  than  the  lower  terms  of  the 
evolution.  It  may  be  that  the  doctrine  is  true,  and  that 
"  necessity  is  the  true  freedom."  But  let  us  understand 
that  the  freedom  belongs  to  God,  the  necessity  to  man ; 
the  freedom  to  the  whole,  the  necessity  to  the  parts. 

Such  a  Transcendentalism,  equally  with  Naturalism, 
also  and  at  the  same  time  invalidates  the  distinction 
between  good  and  evil,  resolving  apparent  evil  into  real 
good,  and  seeing  things  as,  in  their  ultimate  reality, 
all  very  good.  Or  rather,  both  good  and  evil  are  re- 
solved into  a  tertium  quid.  "  Goodness  [and,  of  course, 
badness  too]  is  an  appearance,  it  is  phenomenal,  and 
therefore  self-contradictory."  x  "  Goodness  is  a  subordi- 
nate and,  therefore,  a  self-contradictory  aspect  of  the 
universe." ''  Such  distinctions  are  fictions  of  our  own 
abstraction,  mere  entia  imaginationis,  as  Spinoza  called 
them,  the  results  of  a  partial  knowledge,  and  therefore 
cease  to  exist  from  the  standpoint  of  the  whole. 

1  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  419.  2  Ibid.,  p.  420. 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  395 

But  man,  as  an  ethical  being,  is  a  part  of  the  universe, 
and,  as  a  part,  he  must  be  explained,  not  explained  away. 
To  interpret  his  moral  life  as  mere  '  appearance/  to  de- 
personalise and  thus  to  de-moralise  him,  is  to  explain 
away  his  characteristic  being.  This  pantheistic  absorp- 
tion of  man  in  God  is  too  rapid  an  explanation  ;  the 
unity  thus  reached  cannot  be  the  true  unity,  since  it 
negates,  instead  of  explaining,  the  facts  in  question.  Such 
an  unethical  unification  might  conceivably  be  a  sufficient 
interpretation  of  nature,  and  of  man  in  so  far  as  he  is  a 
natural  being,  and  even  in  so  far  as  he  is  an  intellectual 
being  ;  it  is  not  a  sufficient  interpretation  of  man  as  man, 
or  in  his  moral  being.  The  reality  of  the  moral  life  is 
bound  up  with  the  reality  of  human  freedom,  and  the 
reality  of  freedom  with  the  integrity  of  the  moral  per- 
sonality. If  I  am  a  person,  an  '  ego  on  my  own  account,'  I 
am  free  ;  if  I  am  not  such  a  person  or  ego,  I  am  not  free. 

10.  Resulting  conception  of  freedom. — It  would 
seem,  then,  that  the  only  possible  vindication  of  freedom 
is  to  take  our  stand  on  the  moral  self  or  personality,  as 
itself  the  heart  and  centre  of  the  ethical  life,  the  key  to 
the  moral  situation.  The  integrity  of  moral  personality 
may  be  tampered  with,  as  we  have  found,  in  two  ways. 
Man  may  be  de-personalised  either  into  nature  or  into 
God.  And  although  the  naturalistic  reduction  may  be 
the  favourite  course  of  contemporary  determinism,  the 
greater  danger  lies  perhaps  in  the  other  direction ;  it  was 
here  that  the  older  Determinists  like  Edwards  waged  the 
keenest  warfare.  The  relation  of  man,  as  a  free  moral 
personality,  to  God  is  even  more  difficult  to  conceive 
than  his  relation  to  nature ;  theology  has  more  perils 
for  human  freedom  than  cosmology.  To  think  of  God 
as  all  in  all,  and  yet  to  retain  our  hold  on  human  free- 
dom or  personality, — that  is  the  real  metaphysical  diffi- 
culty. To  see  in  our  own  personality  a  mere  appearance 
behind  which  is  God,  is  to  destroy  the  reality  of  the 


396  Metaphysical  Implications 

moral  life ;  yet  when  we  try  to  think  of  that  life  from 
the  divine  standpoint,  the  difficulty  is  to  understand  its 
reality.  But,  even  though  the  ultimate  reconciliation  of 
divine  and  human  personality  may  be  still  beyond  us, 
I  do  not  see  how  either  conception  can  be  given  up, 
whether  for  a  religious  Mysticism  or  for  an  absolute 
philosophical  Idealism.  The  Mystic  has  always  striven 
to  reach  the  consciousness  of  God  through  the  negation  of 
self-consciousness  ;  it  must  rather  be  reached  through  the 
deepening  and  enriching,  the  infinite  expansion,  of  self- 
consciousness.  Even  for  metaphysics,  personality  or  self- 
consciousness  would  seem  to  be  the  ultimate  category. 
For,  after  all,  the  chief  guarantee  of  a  worthy  view  of  God 
is  a  worthy  view  of  man.  The  affirmation  of  the  reality 
of  the  moral  life  must  give  us  in  the  end  a  higher  view  of 
God,  as  well  as  enable  us  to  conceive  the  possibility  of  a 
higher  union  with  him — the  union  and  communion  not 
only  of  thought  with  Thought,  but  of  will  with  Will.  It 
is  through  the  conviction  of  his  own  superiority  to  nature, 
of  his  own  essential  dignity  and  independence  as  a  moral 
person,  that  man  reaches  the  conception  of  One  infinitely 
greater  than  himself.  To  resolve  the  integrity  of  his 
personality  even  into  that  of  God,  would  be  to  negate 
the  divine  greatness  itself,  by  invalidating  the  conception 
through  which  it  was  reached.  We  must,  indeed,  think 
of  our  life  and  destiny  as,  like  the  course  and  destiny  of 
the  worlds,  ultimately  in  God's  hands,  and  not  in  our 
own.  If  man  is  an  imperium,  he  is  only  an  imperium 
in  imperio.  If  God  has,  in  a  sense,  vacated  the  sphere 
of  human  activity,  he  still  rules  man's  destiny,  and  can 
turn  his  evil  into  good.  The  classical  conception  of  Fate 
and  the  Christian  thought  of  a  divine  Providence  have 
high  metaphysical  warrant.  All  human  experience 

"  Should  teach  us 

There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will." 


The  Problem  of  Freedom  397 

Yet  man  cannot  regard  himself  as  a  mere  instrument  in 
the  divine  hands,  a  passive  vehicle  of  the  energy  of  God. 
Activity  (tvtpjfia)  is  the  category  of  his  life  as  man,  and 
his  highest  conception  of  his  relation  to  God  is  that  of 
co-operation  (awtpyia).  He  must  regard  himself  as  a 
fellow-worker,  even  with  God.  This  is  his  high  human 
birthright,  which  he  may  not  sell. 


LITERATURE. 

Hutne,  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding,  sec.  via. 

J.  S.  Mill,  Examination  of  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  ch.  xxvi. 

T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  ii.  ch.  i. 

F.  H.  Bradley,  Ethical  Studies,  Essay  i. 

J.  Dewey,  Study  of  Ethics,  ch.  viii. ;  Outlines  of  Ethics,  pp.  158-166. 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  i.  ch.  iii.  §§  7-13  (3rd  ed.) 

W.  James,  "The  Dilemma  of  Determinism"  (The   Will  to  Believe,  and 

Other  Essays,  pp.  145-183). 
J.  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion,  bk.  iii.  ch.  ii. 
C.  F.  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  i.  ch.  iii. 
A.  Seth,  "The  New  Psychology  and  Automatism"  (Man's  Place  in  the 

Cosmos,  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  64-128). 


398 


CHAPTER    IL 

THE    PROBLEM    OF    GOD. 

1.  The  necessity  of  the  theological  question. — The 
demand  that  we  shall  be  positive,  scientific,  or  un-meta- 
physical  in  our  thinking,  reaches  its  climax  when  we 
approach  the  problem  of  the  divine  government  of  the 
world.  If  a  scientific  theory  of  morals  is  not  based  upon 
the  doctrine  of  moral  freedom,  still  less  does  it  rest,  we 
are  told,  upon  a  doctrine  of  God ;  if  a  rational  psychology 
is  illegitimate,  still  more  obviously  so  is  a  rational  theol- 
ogy ;  if  metaphysics  in  general  is  ruled  out  as  unscientific, 
then  theology,  which  is  metaphysics  run  wild,  is  a  fortiori 
condemned.  The  command,  "  Be  un-metaphysical,"  is, 
more  closely  interpreted,  the  command  "Be  un- theo- 
logical." The  entire  argument  of  contemporary  Agnos- 
ticism and  Positivism  is  to  the  effect  that  God  is  either 
the  unknown  and  unknowable,  or  the  most  unreal  of  all 
abstractions,  the  merest  fiction  of  the  human  imagination. 
The  phenomenal  alone  is  real  and  intelligible.  The  nou- 
menal  is  either  unreal,  or,  if  real,  unintelligible.  Let  us 
be  content,  then,  with  the  relative  and  phenomenal,  the 
positive  reality  of  experience,  whether  that  experience  be 
intellectual  or  moral. 

It  is  customary  with  scientific  and  Evolutionary  moral- 
ists, even  with  those  who,  like  Mr  Stephen,  profess  Agnos- 
ticism, to  correlate  man  with  nature,  and  to  seek  to 
demonstrate  the  unity  and  continuity  of  his  life  with 


The  Problem  of  God  399 

that  of  the  physical  universe.  This  is,  of  course,  a  meta- 
physical endeavour,  and  if  its  legitimacy  is  not  open  to 
question,  I  do  not  see  why  the  effort  to  correlate  the  life 
of  man  with  that  of  God  should  be  pronounced  illegitimate. 
If  morality  has  natural  sanctions,  why  should  it  not 
have  divine  sanctions  ?  Metaphysics  is  essentially  and 
inevitably  theological ;  if  we  cannot  exclude  metaphysics, 
we  cannot  exclude  theology.  If  we  must  ask,  What  is 
man's  relation  to  nature  ?  we  must  also  ask,  What  is  his 
relation  to  God  ?  It  is  probably  fear  of  theology,  rather 
than  fear  of  metaphysics,  that  inspires  the  Agnostic  and 
Positivist  ethics.  Nor  is  the  fear  unreasonable,  considering 
the  views  of  morality  which  have  been  inculcated  in  the 
name  of  theology,  the  supernatural  machinery  that  has 
been  called  into  play  to  execute  the  sanctions  in  ques- 
tion, and  the  '  terms  of  hell '  to  which  theologians  have 
often  striven  to  reduce  the  life  of  man.  Such  views  are 
the  expression  of  crude  thought  and  blind  dogmatism ; 
they  are  not  entitled  to  the  proud  name  which  Aristotle 
claimed  for  his  '  first  philosophy  '  or  metaphysics,  the 
name  '  theology.'  No  lees  unworthy  is  it  to  employ  the 
conception  of  God  as  a  mere  refuge  of  ignorance ;  the 
deus  ex  machind  is  as  unwarrantable  in  ethical  as  in 
natural  philosophy.  The  '  will  of  God '  is  not  to  be 
invoked  as  a  mere  external  authority,  to  spare  us  the 
trouble  of  discovering  the  rationale  either  of  nature  or  of 
morality.  God  must  be  rather  the  goal  than  the  starting- 
point  of  our  philosophy.  To  '  see  all  things  in  God  ' 
would  be  to  understand  all  things  perfectly ;  to  see  any- 
thing in  that  Light  would  be  to  see  all  things  as  they 
truly  are.  Yet  we  cannot  rest  content  in  any  lower 
knowledge ;  the  world  and  life  remain  dark  to  us  until 
they  receive  that  illumination. 

The  Agnostics  invite  us  to  follow  with  them  the  well 
trodden  paths  of  moral  and  religious  faith,  of  practical 
or  ethical  belief.  Indeed  the  deepest  motive  of  modern 
Agnosticism,  as  it  originated  in  Kant,  was  the  preservation 


400  Metaphysical  Implications 

of  such  moral  faith,  the  defence  of  ethical  and  religious 
reality,  as  unknowable,  from  rationalistic  dissolution.  The 
Agnostic  is  not  generally  content,  with  Spencer,  to  cele- 
brate the  Unknown  and  Unknowable,  or,  with  Hamilton 
and  Mansel,  to  proclaim  the  inspiration  that  comes  of 
mystery,  to  glory  in  the  imbecility  of  the  human  mind 
and  the  relativity  of  all  its  knowledge.  He  is  apt,  with 
Locke  and  Kant,  nay,  with  Hamilton  and  Spencer  them- 
selves, to  insist  on  the  rights  of  the  ethical  and  religious 
spirit,  and  its  independence  of  the  intellectual  or  scientific 
understanding.  The  interest  of  the  former,  he  contends, 
is  practical,  not  theoretical;  its  sphere  is  not  thought, 
but  life.  Its  instrument  is  the  creative  imagination ;  its 
atmosphere  is  not  the  dry  light  of  the  intellect,  but 
the  warmth  and  glow  of  the  emotional  nature,  and  the 
moving  energy  of  the  will.  It  is  with  the  appreciation  of 
true  culture  and  of  delicate  moral  and  religious  suscepti- 
bility, that  this  acknowledgment  is  made.  It  is  made,  in 
slightly  different  ways,  by  Lange  and  Tyndall,  no  less 
fully  than  by  Huxley  and  Spencer.  To  speak  of  such 
writers  as  '  atheistic '  or  '  irreligious,'  is  most  unfair  and 
most  misleading.  It  is  not  the  heart,  but  the  head, 
that  is  at  fault.  Their  view  of  human  nature  is  both 
broad  and  deep ;  what  it  wants  is  logical  clearness  and 
coherence. 

That  there  is  a  moral,  as  well  as  an  intellectual  reality, 
and  that  the  moral  life,  as  such,  is  independent  of  any 
theoretical  understanding  of  it,  is  surely  true  and  im- 
portant. But,  that  this  independence  is  absolute  and 
ultimate,  we  cannot  believe.  Unless  we  are  sceptics,  and 
have  only  Hume's  blind  belief  of  custom,  we  cannot  say 
that.  The  Kantian  Agnostic  is  right  when  he  recognises 
a  spiritual  element  in  man,  and  concedes  its  claim  to  an 
appropriate  life.  Man  is  an  ethical,  as  well  as  an  in- 
tellectual being ;  the  will  and  emotions  demand  a  sphere 
of  their  own.  But  if  the  world  of  man's  moral  and 
religious  life  is  the  mere  projection  of  the  emotional 


'fhe  Problem  of  God  401 

imagination,  it  is  a  world  in  which  that  life  cannot  con- 
tinue to  live.  It  has  been  said  that  if  there  is  no  God, 
we  must  make  one ;  but  a  God  of  our  own  making  is  no 
God.  If  the  moral  and  religious  ideal  is  a  mere  ideal,  the 
shadow  cast  by  the  actual  in  the  sunshine  of  the  human 
imagination ;  if  the  ideal  is  not  also  in  very  truth  the 
real ;  if  the  good  is  not  also  the  true,  the  reality  of  man's 
spiritual  life  is  destroyed,  and  its  foundations  are  sapped. 
Man  cannot  permanently  live  on  fictions  ;  the  insight  that 
his  deepest  life  is  but  "  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision  " 
must  bring  with  it,  sooner  or  later,  the  downfall  of  the 
life  thus  undermined.  Agnosticism,  if  it  is  true,  must 
carry  with  it  the  ultimate  disappearance  of  religion,  and, 
with  religion,  of  all  morality  higher  than  utility.  For  we 
cannot  permanently  separate  the  ethical  and  intellectual 
man.  His  nature  and  life  are  one,  single,  indissolubly 
bound  together ;  and  ultimately  he  must  demand  an  in- 
tellectual justification  of  his  ethical  and  religious  life,  a 
theory  of  it  as  well  as  of  the  world  of  nature.  The 
need  of  ethical  harmony  must  make  itself  felt :  a  moral 
being  demands  a  moral  environment  or  sphere.  The 
attempt  to  divorce  emotion  and  activity  from  knowledge 
is  a  psychological  error  of  a  glaring  kind.  Our  life  is 
one,  as  our  nature  is  one.  We  cannot  live  in  sections, 
or  in  faculties.  Temporarily  and  in  the  individual,  an 
approximation  to  such  a  divorce  may  be  possible,  but  not 
permanently  or  in  the  race.  The  practical  life  is  con- 
nected, in  a  rational  being,  with  the  theoretical ;  we 
cannot  be  permanently  illogical,  either  in  morality  or 
religion.  The  postulate  of  man's  spiritual  life  is  the 
harmony  of  nature  and  spirit,  or  the  spiritual  constitu- 
tion of  the  universe. 

2.  Agnosticism  and  Positivism. — If  we  ask,  then, 
Where  is  the  source  of  ethical  enthusiasm  to  be  found  ?  the 
answer  of  the  scientific  or  un-metaphysical  philosopher  is : 
Either  in  the  unknowable  Absolute,  or  in  that  phenomenal 

2  c 


402  Metaphysical  Implications 

moral  reality  which  we  know,  in  the  ethical  life  of 
humanity.  The  former  is  the  answer  of  Agnosticism,  the 
latter  is  that  of  Positivism.  The  first  answer  is  purely 
negative,  and  does  not  carry  us  far.  According  to  this 
view,  morality  is  not,  any  more  than  any  other  phase  of 
human  experience,  a  true  exponent  or  expression  of 
ultimate  Reality.  If  it  has  any  positive  meaning,  it 
is  simply  that  the  real  is  not  the  phenomenal,  that 
phenomena  or  facts  are  but  the  appearances  of  a  deeper 
Reality.  It  is  indeed  a  most  important  truth,  that  the 
universe  is  not  a  mere  flux  or  process,  a  stream  of  ten- 
dency which  tends  no  whither,  but  that  it  has  an  abiding 
meaning.  Neither  is  the  universe  a  sphinx,  on  whose 
dead  expressionless  face  we  must  for  ever  gaze  without  a 
suggestion  of  a  solution  of  the  riddle  of  the  earth.  If  the 
meaning  of  things  is  one  which  we  can  never  hope  in  any 
measure  to  decipher,  then  for  us  there  might  as  well  be 
no  meaning  at  all.  And  as  for  the  needed  moral  inspira- 
tion, an  unknown  quantity  can  hardly  be  the  source  of 
inspiration.  One  can  hardly  wonder  at  Mr  Harrison's 
travesty  of  the  Agnostic's  prayer  to  his  unknown  God : 
"  0  #nth  love  us,  help  us,  make  us  one  with  thee  ! " 

If  the  Agnostic  sends  us  to  an  unknown  and  unknow- 
able Absolute  for  the  inspiration  of  our  moral  life,  the 
Positivist  bids  us  see  in  that  never-ceasing  human  proces- 
sion, of  which  we  ourselves  form  such  a  humble  part,  the 
object  of  reverent  adoration,  and  draw  from  the  sight 
the  moral  inspiration  which  we  need.  Comte  and  his 
followers  would  have  us,  in  this  day  of  the  intellectual 
majority  of  the  race,  dethrone  the  usurper  gods  of  its 
theological  and  metaphysical  minority,  and  place  on 
the  throne  the  true  and  only  rightful  God — the  Grand 
fitre  of  Humanity  itself.  In  our  weakness,  we  may  cast 
ourselves  upon  its  greater  strength ;  in  our  foolishness, 
upon  its  deeper  wisdom ;  in  our  sin  and  error,  upon  its 
less  erring  righteousness.  Nay,  we  can  pray  to  this 
'mighty  mother '  of  our  being ;  we  are  her  children,  and 


The  Problem  of  God  403 

she  is  able  to  sustain  us.  Nor  need  we  stop  short  of 
worship,  for  the  Grand  Eire  is  infinitely  greater  than 
we,  and  contains  all  our  greatness  in  itself.  And  if  we 
ask  for  a  moral  dynamic,  for  an  energy  of  goodness 
which  will  make  the  good  life,  otherwise  so  hard  or 
even  impossible,  a  possibility  and  a  joy  to  us,  where  shall 
we  find  such  an  abiding  and  abundant  source  of  moral 
inspiration  as  in  the  '  enthusiasm  of  Humanity '  ?  Here 
is  a  motive-force  strong  enough  to  carry  us  steadily  for- 
ward in  all  good  living,  deep  enough  to  touch  the  very 
springs  of  conduct,  enduring  enough  to  outlast  all  human 
strivings  and  activities. 

It  would  be  ungrateful  to  deny  or  to  minimise  the 
importance  of  this  truth,  to  deny  or  to  belittle  the  fact 
of  the  solidarity  of  the  race,  and  the  capital  importance 
of  that  fact  for  human  conduct.  That  we  are  not  separ- 
ate from  our  brethren,  but  members  one  of  another,  that 
in  our  deepest  interests  and  best  endeavours  we  are  one 
with  our  fellows,  and  that  in  the  realisation  of  that 
fellowship  there  is  a  deep  moral  inspiration, — all  this 
is  true  and  most  important.  But  in  order  that  we 
may  find  in  humanity  all  the  inspiration  that  we  need, 
in  order  that  it  may  become  to  us  a  veritable  Grand 
Eire,  which  may  claim  our  unwavering  trust  and  rever- 
ence, we  must  abstract  from  the  concrete  and  actual 
humanity  of  our  experience,  from  the  real  men  and 
women  whom  we  know,  and  know  to  be  imperfect,  to 
have  failings  as  well  as  virtues  and  excellences  of 
character,  whom  we  love  even  in  their  weakness,  and 
perhaps  even  because  of  it,  but  whom  we  cannot  wor- 
ship, or  regard  as  the  complete  embodiment  of  the  moral 
ideal.  Not  men,  but  man,  then,  must  be  the  object  of 
our  worship  and  the  source  of  our  ethical  enthusiasm ; 
not  the  members  of  the  race,  but  the  race  itself,  must 
be  our  Grand  Etre.  "What  is  this  but  to  set  up,  on 
the  throne  vacated  by  the  fictitious  deity  of  metaphysical 
abstraction,  a  new  fiction,  the  latest  product  of  hypo- 


404  Metaphysical  Implications 

statisation,  the  last  relic  of  scholastic  Eealism,  a  '  great 
being '  which  derives  its  greatness  and  worshipfulness 
from  the  elimination  of  those  characteristics  which  alone 
make  it  real  and  actual  ?  The  race  consists  of  men  and 
women,  of  moral  individuals;  and  the  moral  individual 
is  never  quite  worshipful.  '  Humanity'  is  only  a  collective 
or  generic  term :  it  describes  the  common  nature  of  its 
individual  members,  it  does  not  denote  a  separate  being, 
or  the  existence  of  that  common  nature,  apart  from  the 
individuals  who  share  it.  A  touch  of  logic,  or,  at  any 
rate,  of  that  metaphysic  which  we  are  supposed  to  have 
outgrown,  but  which  we  cannot  afford  to  outgrow,  is 
enough  to  reveal  the  unreality  and  ghostliness  of  the 
Positivist's  Grand  fitre. 

The  Religion  of  Humanity  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  mis- 
statement  of  an  all-important  truth,  namely,  that  God 
is  to  be  found  in  man  in  a  sense  in  which  he  is  not 
to  be  found  in  nature,  that  he  is  to  be  found  in  man 
as  man,  as  an  ethical  and  non-natural  being.  But  this 
very  differentiation  of  man  from  nature,  on  winch  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  rests,  must  be  vindicated ;  and  its 
vindication  must  be  metaphysical.  Such  an  interpreta- 
tion of  human  life  implies  an  idealisation  of  man,  the 
discovery  in  his  phenomenal  life  of  an  ideal  meaning 
which  gives  it  the  unique  value  attributed  to  it.  Man 
is  divine,  let  us  admit ;  but  it  is  this  divinity  of  man  that 
has  chiefly  to  be  accounted  for.  What  is  the  Fountain 
of  these  welling  springs  of  divinity  in  man  ?  Unless 
behind  your  fellow  and  yourself,  and  in  both,  you  see  God, 
you  will  not  catch  the  '  enthusiasm  of  humanity.'  The 
true  enthusiasm  for  humanity  is  an  enthusiasm  for  God, 
for  God  in  man.  When,  in  the  good  man,  we  see 
the  image  of  God,  when,  behind  all  the  shortcomings 
of  actual  goodness,  we  see  the  infinite  divine  potenti- 
ality of  good,  we  can  mingle  reverence  with  our  human 
love,  and  hope  with  our  pity  and  regret.  But  the  roots 
of  our  reverence  and  our  hope  are  deep  in  the  absolute 


TJie  Problem  of  God  405 

goodness  that  we  see  reflected  in  the  human  as  in  a 
mirror.  If  this  human  goodness  is  the  original,  and 
reflects  not  a  higher  and  more  perfect  than  itself, 
its  power  to  stimulate  the  good  life  is  incalculably 
diminished. 

3.  Naturalism. — I  have  devoted  so  much  attention 
to  Agnosticism  and  Positivism,  because  these  are  the 
contemporary  equivalents  of  that  anti-theological  spirit 
which,  till  quite  recently,  called  itself  Materialism  or 
Atheism.  The  general  attitude  of  mind  common  to  the 
earlier  and  the  later  form  of  thought  might  be  described 
as  Naturalism  or  Phenomenalism,  as  opposed  to  Super- 
naturalism  or  Noumenalism.  It  adopts  a  mechanical  or 
materialistic  explanation,  rather  than  a  teleological  and 
idealistic.  But  the  absolute  or  ontological  Materialism 
of  former  times  has  been  supplanted  by  the  relative  or 
'  scientific '  Materialism  of  the  Agnostics.  The  Agnostic 
denies  the  possibility  of  metaphysical  knowledge  in  gen- 
eral, and  of  a  metaphysic  of  ethics  in  particular.  All 
knowledge  being  positive  or  scientific,  and  the  ultimate 
positive  reality  being  physical  energy,  it  follows  that  all 
explanation,  even  of  psychical  and  ethical  phenomena,  is 
in  terms  of  this  energy,  in  mechanical  and  material  terms. 
In  spite  of  his  professed  impartiality  between  matter  and 
mind,  Spencer  does  not  hesitate  to  offer  such  a  material- 
istic or  naturalistic  interpretation  of  the  moral  life.  Even 
when  the  attempt  is  not  made  to  explain  the  moral 
life  in  terms  of  mechanism,  the  possibility  of  any  other 
explanation  is  denied,  and  we  are  asked  to  be  simply 
agnostic  or  positive  in  our  attitude  to  it.  This  is  the 
position  of  Professor  Huxley  in  his  notable  Eomanes 
Lecture  on  Evolution  and  Ethics,  a  brilliant  statement 
of  the  consistent  and  characteristic  ethics  of  Agnosticism. 

What,  then,  are  we  offered  in  the  name  of  scientific 
explanation,  and  &s  a  substitute  for  metaphysical  specu- 
lation ?  A  naturalistic  scheme  of  morality,  the  correla- 


406  Metaphysical  Implications 

tion  of  the  ethical  with  the  physical  process,  the  incor- 
poration of  man — his  virtue  and  his  vice,  his  defects 
and  his  failures,  his  ideals  and  attainments — as  a  term  in 
the  process  of  cosmical  evolution.  We  are  offered,  in 
short,  a  new  version  of  the  '  ethics  of  Naturalism,'  far 
superior  to  the  old  utilitarian  version,  superior  because 
so  much  more  scientific.  Man,  like  all  other  animals, 
like  all  other  beings,  is  the  creature  of  his  conditions ; 
his  life  is  progressively  defined  by  adjustment  to  them ; 
his  goodness  is  simply  that  which  has  given  or  gives 
him  the  advantage  in  the  universal  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, and  has  enabled  him  to  survive.  The  ethical 
category  is  one  with  the  physical ;  the  '  best '  is  only 
the  '  fittest.'  The  ideal  is  the  shadow  of  the  actual, 
and  the  distinction  arises  from  the  very  nature  of  evolu- 
tion as  a  process,  as  the  becoming  of  that  which  is  not 
yet  but  shall  be.  Thus  would  the  Evolutionist  in  ethics 
naturalise  the  moral  man,  account  for  him  .and  even 
for  his  ideals  by  reference  to  that  nature  of  which  he 
forms  a  part,  and  make  the  ethical  process  only  a  later 
stage  of  .the  cosmical  process.  Thus  for  God  we  are 
asked  to  substitute  nature,  and  in  "  the  ways  of  the 
[physical]  cosmos  to  find  a  sufficient  sanction  for  mor- 
ality." Where  is  the  need  of  God,  whether  for  moral 
authority  or  for  moral  government,  when  Nature  is  so 
profoundly  ethical,  so  scrupulously  discriminating  in  her 
consideration  for  the  good,  and  in  her  condemnation  of 
the  evil ;  when  goodness  itself  is  but  the  ripe  fruit  of 
Nature's  processes,  and  evil,  truly  interpreted,  is  only 
goodness  misunderstood,  or  goodness  in  the  making  ? 

But,  as  we  have  learned  to  know  Nature  better,  better 
to  understand  the  ways  of  the  physical  cosmos,  we  have 
found  that  these  ways  are  by  no  means  ways  of  right- 
eousness. The  doctrine  of  evolution  has  itself  made  it 
infinitely  more  difficult  for  us  than  it  was  for  the  Stoics 
to  unify  the  ethical  and  the  cosmic  process.  It  is  one 
of  the  keenest  students  of  nature,  as  well  as  one  of  the 


TJie  Problem  of  God  407 

keenest  thinkers  of  our  time,  Professor  Huxley,  who  has 
stated  this  difficulty  in  the  most  emphatic  terms,  who 
has  confessed  in  the  fullest  way  the  failure  of  the 
scientific  effort  "  to  make  existence  intelligible  and  to 
bring  the  order  of  things  into  harmony  with  the  moral 
sense  of  man,"  *  and  who  speaks  of  "  the  unfathomable 
injustice  of  the  nature  of  things."2  He  has  reminded 
us  how  ancient  the  problem  is,  and  how  ancient  the 
confession  of  man's  inability  to  solve  it ;  how  "  by  the 
Tiber,  as  by  the  Ganges,  ethical  man  admits  that  the 
cosmos  is  too  strong  for  him  ;"  how  the  roots  of  pessimism 
are  to  be  sought  for  in  this  contradiction ;  how  "  social 
progress  means  a  checking  of  the  cosmic  process  at  every 
step,  and  the  substitution  for  it  of  another,  which  may 
be  called  the  ethical  process,  the  end  of  which  is  not  the 
survival  of  those  who  may  happen  to  be  the  fittest,  in 
respect  of  the  whole  cf  the  conditions  which  exist,  but 
of  those  who  are  ethically  the  best ; "  3  how  "  the  prac- 
tice of  that  which  is  ethically  the  best — what  we  call 
goodness  or  virtue — involves  a  course  of  conduct  which, 
in  all  respects,  is  opposed  to  that  which  leads  to  success 
in  the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence ; "  how  the  history 
of  civilisation  is  the  record  of  "  the  steps  by  which 
men  have  succeeded  in  building  up  an  artificial  world 
within  the  cosmos ; "  how  Nature's  "  moral  indifference  " 
culminates  in  her  undoing  of  that  moral  creation  which 
had  seemed  her  fairest  work ;  how  she,  for  whom  there 
is  no  '  best '  and  '  worst,'  and  for  whom  the  '  fittest '  is 
only  the  '  ablest,'  will  yet  undo  her  own  work,  and  man's 
resistance  to  her  mighty  power  will  avail  him  nothing  to 
"arrest  the  procession  of  the  great  year." 

Professor  Huxley  doubtless  goes  too  far  when  he  says 
that  "  the  cosmic  process  bears  no  sort  of  relation  to  the 
ethical,"  but  he  has  at  any  rate  stated  clearly  the  issue 
at  stake,  namely,  the  question  of  the  legitimacy  of  the 
identification  of  the  ethical  process  with  the  process 

J  Evolution  and  Ethics,  p.  8.  2  Ibid.,  p.  12.  3  Ibid.,  p.  33. 


408  Metaphysical  Implications 

of  the  physical  cosmos,  the  identification  of  '  the  power 
that  makes  for  righteousness '  with  the  necessity  of 
natural  evolution.  If,  as  I  have  contended,  a  natural- 
istic explanation  of  the  moral  ideal  is  impossible,  if 
that  ideal  has  another  and  a  higher  certificate  of  birth 
to  show,  then  we  need  not  wonder  that  nature  should 
prove  an  insufficient  sphere  for  the  moral  life,  and  that 
we  should  fail  to  harmonise  the  order  of  nature  with  the 
order  of  morality.  If  man  is  not  part  of  nature,  but  dis- 
parate from  nature,  then  his  life  and  nature's  may  well 
conflict  in  the  lines  of  their  development.  If  we  acknow- 
ledge such  a  conflict,  we  may  either  be  candidly  agnostic, 
and,  regarding  physical  explanation  as  the  only  explana- 
tion, we  may  say  that  morality,  just  because  it  is  unde- 
niably different  from  nature,  is  inexplicable ;  or  we  may 
seek  for  another  explanation  of  it,  and  try  to  answer  Mr 
Spencer's  question :  "  If  the  ethical  man  is  not  a  product 
of  the  cosmic  process,  what  is  he  a  product  of  ? "  Does 
not  the  very  insufficiency  of  Naturalism  necessitate — 
unless  we  are  to  remain  agnostic  —  a  supernatural  or 
transcendental  view  of  morality  ?  Does  not  the  non- 
moral  character  of  nature  necessitate  a  moral  government 
of  man's  life  higher  than  the  government  of  nature,  a 
discipline,  retribution,  and  reward  that  transcend  those  of 
nature  in  justice,  insight,  and  discrimination  ?  Professor 
Huxley's  lecture,  with  its  emphatic,  almost  passionate, 
assertion  of  the  dualism  of  nature  and  morality,  with  its 
absolute  refusal  to  merge  the  latter  in  the  former,  is  itself 
a  fine  demonstration  of  the  impossibility  of  metaphysical 
indifference.  The  profound  ethical  faith  which  it  ex- 
presses is  the  best  evidence  of  the  author's  superiority  to 
his  creed,  the  best  proof  that  Agnosticism  cannot  be,  for 
such  a  mind,  a  final  resting-place.  For  the  mere  asser- 
tion of  the  dualism  and  opposition  of  the  ethical  and  the 
cosmical  process  is  not  the  whole  case.  That  dualism  and 
opposition  raise  the  further  question  of  the  possibility  of 

1  Athenceum,  August  5,  1893. 


The  Problem  of  God  409 

their  reconciliation.  As  one  of  Professor  Huxley's  re- 
viewers said :  "  The  crux  of  the  theory  lies  in  the  answer 
to  the  question  whether  the  ethical  process,  if  in  reality 
opposed  altogether  to  the  cosmical  process,  is  or  is  not  a 
part  of  the  cosmical  process ;  and  if  not,  what  account 
can  be  given  of  its  origin.  In  what  way  is  it  possible,  in 
what  way  is  it  conceivable,  that  that  should  arise  within 
the  cosmical  process  which,  in  Mr  Huxley's  comprehensive 
phrase,  'is  in  all  respects  opposed'  to  its  working?"1 

4.  Man  and  nature. — The  dualism  of  nature  and 
morality  raises  for  us  the  question  whether  we  must  not 
postulate  for  man  as  a  moral  being  another  and  a  higher 
environment  or  sphere  than  nature,  whether  the  ethical 
process  is  not  a  part  of  the  process  of  a  larger  cosmos 
which  transcends  and  includes  the  physical  ?  The  fact 
that  the  physical  scheme  is  not  the  ethical  scheme,  renders 
necessary,  for  the  justification  and  fulfilment  of  morality, 
a  moral  theology,  a  scheme  of  moral  government  which 
will  right  the  wrongs  of  the  physical  government  of  the 
universe.  The  fact  of  opposition  between  nature  and 
spirit,  the  fact  that  man's  true  life  as  man  has  to  be 
lived  in  a  foreign  element,  that  the  power  which  works 
in  the  physical  cosmos  is  not  a  power  which  makes  for 
righteousness  or  a  power  which  cares  for  righteous- 
ness, the  fact  of  '  these  hindrances  and  antipathies  of 
the  actual/  the  indubitable  and  baffling  fact  of  this 
grand  antinomy,  forces  us  beyond  the  actual  physical 
universe  and  its  order,  to  seek  in  a  higher  world  and  a 
different  order  the  explanation  and  fulfilment  of  our 
moral  life.  Intellectually,  we  might  find  ourselves  at 
home  with  nature,  for  her  order  seems  the  reflection  of 
our  own  intelligence.  But  morally,  she  answers  not  to 
the  human  spirit's  questionings  and  cravings ;  rather,  she 
seems  to  contradict  and  to  despise  them.  She  knows  her 
own  children,  and  answers  their  cry.  But  man  she  knows 

1  Athenccum,  July  22,  1893. 


410  Metaphysical  Implications 

not,  and  disclaims ;  for,  in  his  deepest  being,  he  is  no 
child  of  hers.  As  his  certificate  of  birth  is  higher,  so  is 
his  true  life  arid  citizenship  found  in  a  higher  world. 
Thus  there  comes  inevitably  to  the  human  spirit  the 
demand  for  God,  to  untie  the  knot  of  human  fate,  to 
superintend  the  issues  of  the  moral  life,  to  right  the 
wrongs  of  the  natural  order,  to  watch  the  spiritual  for- 
tunes of  his  children,  to  be  himself  the  Home  of  their 
spirits.  Nature  is  morally  blind,  indifferent,  capricious ; 
force  is  unethical.  Hence  the  call  for  a  supreme  Power 
akin  to  the  spirit  of  man,  conscious  of  his  struggle,  sym- 
pathetic with  his  life,  guiding  it  to  a  perfect  issue — the 
call  for  a  supremely  righteous  Will.  This  belief  in  a 
moral  order  is  necessary  if  we  are  to  be  delivered  from 
pessimism.  Mere  agnosticism  means  ethical  pessimism ; 
the  only  escape  is  to  '  see  God.'  Without  such  a  vision 
the  mystery  of  our  human  life  and  destiny  is  entirely 
dark,  the  '  riddle  of  the  painful  earth '  is  absolutely  inex- 
plicable. Unless  our  human  nature  and  life  are,  in  Pro- 
fessor Huxley's  phrase,  "  akin  to  that  which  pervades  the 
universe,"  unless  God  is  on  our  side,  and  we  are  in  a  real 
sense  not  alone  but  co-workers  with  him,  our  life  is,  as 
Hume  described  it,  "  a  riddle,  an  enigma,  an  inexplicable 
mystery." 

The  problem  raised  for  human  thought  by  this  dual- 
ism of  nature  and  morality  is  as  old  as  human  thought 
itself.  It  is  the  problem  of  Fate  or  Fortune — a  Power 
blind  but  omnipotent,  that  sets  its  inexorable  limit  to  the 
life  of  man,  that  closes  at  its  own  set  time  and  in  its  own 
appointed  way  all  his  strivings,  and  blots  out  alike  his 
goodness  and  his  sin  ;  a  Power  which  the  Greeks  quaintly 
thought  of  as  superior  even  to  the  gods  themselves,  and 
which  to  the  modern  mind  seems  to  mean  that  there  is  no 
divinity  in  the  world,  that  the  nature  of  things  is  non- 
moral.  That  which  so  baffles  our  thought  is  "  the  recog- 
nition that  the  cosmos  has  no  place  for  man  ";  that  he 
feels  himself,  when  confronted  with  nature's  might  and 


The  Problem  of  God  411 

apparent  indifference,  an  anomaly,  an  accident,  a  foreigner 
in  the  world,  a  "  stranger  from  afar."  The  stream  of  good 
and  evil  seems  to  lose  itself  in  the  mazes  of  the  course  of 
things  ;  the  threads  of  moral  distinctions  seem  to  get 
hopelessly  intertwined  in  the  tangled  skein  of  nature's 
processes. 

"  Streams  will  not  curb  their  pride 
The  just  man  not  to  entomb, 
Nor  lightnings  go  aside 
To  give  his  virtues  room  : 
Nor  is  that  wind  less  rough  which  blows  a  good  man's  barge. 

Nature,  with  equal  mind, 
Sees  all  her  sons  at  play : 
Sees  man  control  the  wind, 
The  wind  sweep  man  away  ; 
Allows  the  proudly  riding  and  the  foundering  bark."  x 

I  have  said  that  it  is  a  world-old  problem,  this  of  the 
ultimate  issues  of  the  moral  life.  And  it  has  often 
seemed  as  if  the  only  escape  from  total  pessimism  lay  in 
a  calm  and  uncomplaining  surrender  of  that  which  most 
of  all  in  life  we  prize.  Let  us  cease  to  make  our  futile 
demand  of  the  nature  of  things  ;  ceasing  to  expect,  we 
shall  also  cease  from  disappointment  and  vexation  of 
spirit.  Be  it  ours  to  conform  with  the  best  grace  we  can 
to  Nature's  ways,  since  she  will  not  conform  to  ours.  Let 
us  meet  Nature's  "  moral  indifference "  with  the  proud 
indifference  to  Nature  of  the  moral  man.  A  stranger  in 
the  world,  with  his  true  citizenship  in  the  ethical  and 
ideal  sphere,  let  man  withdraw  within  himself,  and  escape 
the  shock  of  outward  circumstance,  by  cutting  off  the  ten- 
drils of  sensibility  which  would  take  hold  on  the  course 
of  the  world  and  make  him  its  slave.  "  Because  thou 
must  not  dream,  thou  needst  not  then  despair ! "  But 
neither  the  philosopher  nor  the  poet,  no,  nor  even  the 
ordinary  man,  will  consent  to  forego  his  dreams  and 
hopes,  nor  will  humanity  pass  from  its  bitter  plaint 

1  Matthew  Arnold,  Poems :  "Empedocles  on  Etna." 


412  Metaphysical  Implications 

against  the  evil  course  of  things  and  the  tragic  wreck  of 
human  lives.  Such  a  dualism  and  contradiction  between 
man  and  his  world  presses  for  its  solution  in  some  deeper 
unity  which  will  embrace  and  explain  them  both.  The 
Stoics,  themselves  the  great  preachers  of  resignation,  had 
their  own  solution  of  the  problem.  The  ways  of  the 
cosmos  were  not  for  them  dark  or  unintelligible  ;  the 
nature  of  things  was,  like  human  nature,  in  its  essence 
altogether  reasonable.  The  question  raised  by  the  im- 
possibility of  correlating  man  and  nature  by  naturalising 
the  moral  man  is,  whether  we  cannot  reduce  both  man 
and  nature  to  a  deeper  unity  ;  whether,  though  human 
nature  is  for  ever  distinct  from  physical  nature,  and  the 
world  of  morality  an  artificial  world  within  the  cosmos, 
both  are  not  expressions  or  exponents  of  a  deeper  nature 
of  things.  Such  a  question  the  unifying  instinct  of  man 
cannot  help  raising.  Even  Professor  Huxley  admits  that 
"  the  ethical  process  must  bear  some  sort  of.  relation  to 
the  cosmic."  Nor  need  this  relation  be  that  of  levelling 
down,  of  reducing  man  to  nature.  Why  should  we  not 
level  up  ?  Why  should  not  nature,  if  in  one  sense  the 
eternal  enemy  of  man,  to  be  subdued  under  his  feet  if  he 
is  to  be  man,  yet  also  be  the  minister  and  instrument 
of  man's  moral  life,  charged  with  a  moral  mission  even 
in  its  moral  enmity  and  indifference  ?  If  the  ethical 
process  is  not  part  of  the  cosmic  process,  may  not  the 
cosmic  be  part  of  the  ethical  ?  Or,  better,  may  not  both 
be  parts  of  the  divine  process  of  the  universe  ?  Since 
man  has  to  live  the  ethical  life  in  a  natural  world,  in  a 
world  which  is  in  a  sense  the  enemy  of  that  life,  and  in 
a  sense  indifferent  to  it,  may  not  the  ethical  process  be 
"  more  reasonably  described  as  an  agency  which  directs 
and  controls  rather  than  entirely  opposes  the  cosmical 
process  "  ? l 

To  the   question  whether  we  can  thus  correlate  the 
ethical  with  the  cosmical  process,  man  with  nature,  by 

1  Atheruzum,  July  22,  1893. 


The  Problem  of  God  413 

seeing  God  in  both,  in  such  wise  that  nature  shall  be- 
come the  instrument  and  servant  of  the  ethical  spirit ;  or 
whether  nature  must  remain  for  man  an  alien  and  oppos- 
ing force  which,  by  its  moral  indifference,  is  always  liable, 
if  not  to  defeat,  to  embarrass  and  endanger  moral  ends, 
— to  this  question  I  do  not  see  that  we  can  give  more 
than  a  tentative  answer.  Our  answer  must  be  rather  a 
speculative  guess,  a  philosophic  faith,  than  a  reasoned 
certainty.  Nature  in  ourselves  we  may  annex,  our 
natural  dispositions,  instincts,  impulses,  we  may  subdue 
to  moral  ends ;  this  raw  material  we  may  work  entirely 
into  the  texture  of  the  ethical  life.  But  what  of  the 
nature  which  is  without  ourselves  ?  What  of  that  '  furni- 
ture of  fortune  '  of  which  Aristotle  speaks,  which  seems  to 
come  to  us  and  to  be  taken  away  from  us  without  any 
reference,  ofttimes,  to  our  ethical  deservings  ?  What 
of  that  Fate  in  which  our  life  is  involved,  whose  issues 
are  unto  life  and  unto  death,  which  disappoints  and 
blights  our  spiritual  hopes,  whose  capricious  favours  no 
merit  can  secure,  whose  gifts  and  calamities  descend 
without  discrimination  upon  the  evil  and  the  good  ?  Call 
it  what  we  will — fortune,  circumstance,  fate — does  there 
not  remain  an  insoluble  and  baffling  quantity,  an  x  which 
we  can  never  eliminate,  and  whose  presence  destroys  all 
our  calculations  ?  Yet  the  ground  of  moral  confidence  is 
the  conviction,  inseparable  from  the  moral  life,  of  the 
supremacy  and  ultimate  masterfulness  of  the  moral  order. 
Professor  Huxley  himself  expresses  a  sober  and  measured 
confidence  of  this  kind :  "  It  may  seem  an  audacious 
proposal  thus  to  pit  the  microcosm  against  the  macrocosm, 
and  to  set  man  to  subdue  nature  to  his  higher  ends ;  but 
I  venture  to  think  that  the  great  intellectual  difference 
between  the  ancient  times  ...  .  and  our  day  lies  in  the 
solid  foundation  we  have  acquired  for  the  hope  that  such 
an  enterprise  may  meet  with  a  certain  measure  of  success." 
With  the  advance  of  science,  man  has  learned  his  own 
power  over  nature,  the  power,  which  increasing  knowledge 


414  Metaphysical  Implications 

brings,  to  subdue  Nature  to  his  own  ends ;  and  his  confi- 
dence inevitably  grows  that  he  is  Nature's  master,  not  her 
slave.  But  whether  he  can  ever  entirely  subdue  her, 
whether  the  natural  order  will  ever  be  so  filled  with  the 
moral  order  as  to  be  the  perfect  expression  and  vehicle 
of  the  latter;  or  whether  the  natural  order  must  always 
remain  the  imperfect  expression  of  the  moral,  and  some 
new  and  perfect  expression  be  framed  for  it,  we  cannot 
tell.  Only  this  we  can  say,  that  since  each  is  an  order, 
since  nature  itself  is  a  cosmos,  not  a  chaos,  and  since  they 
issue  from  a  common  source,  nature  and  morality  must 
ultimately  be  harmonised. 

5.  The  modern  statement  of  the  problem. — This,  in 
itself  unchanging,  problem  assumes  two  different  aspects, 
a^  it  appears  in  ancient  and  in  modern  speculation.  It 
is  in  the  latter  of  these  aspects  that  we  are  naturally 
most  familiar  with  it,  and  in  this  form  perhaps  its  most 
characteristic  statement  is  that  of  Kant.  The  ultimate 
issue  of  goodness,  he  contends,  must  be  happiness ;  the 
external  and  the  internal  fortunes  of  the  soul  must  in 
the  end  coincide.  This  is  the  Kantian  argument  for  the 
existence  of  God,  as  moral  governor  of  the  universe,  dis- 
tributor of  rewards  and  punishments  in  accordance  with 
individual  desert.  For  though  the  very  essence  of  virtue 
is  its  disinterestedness,  yet  the  final  equation  of  virtue 
and  happiness  is  for  Kant  the  postulate  of  morality. 
We  have  seen  that  the  Hedonists,  who  reduce  virtue  to 
prudence  and  the  right  to  the  expedient,  find  themselves 
forced,  for  the  sake  of  the  vindication  of  altruistic  conduct, 
or  of  that  part  of  virtue  which  refuses  to  be  resolved  into 
prudence,  to  make  the  same  postulate  in  another  form. 
Either  the  appeal  is  made  to  the  future  course  of  the 
evolutionary  process,  which,  it  is  argued,  cannot  stop 
short  of  the  identification  of  virtue  and  prudence,  indi- 
vidual goodness  and  individual  happiness ;  or  it  is  main- 
tained, as  by  Professor  Sidgwick,  that  the  gap  in  ethical 


The  Problem  of  God  415 

theory  must  be  filled  in  by  a  theological  hypothesis  of 
the  Kantian  sort.  The  Socratic  conviction  is  reasserted, 
that  "  if  the  Kulers  of  the  universe  do  not  prefer  the  just 
man  to  the  unjust,  it  is  better  to  die  than  to  live."  Nor 
is  such  a  demand  the  expression  of  mere  self-interest. 
"  When  a  man  passionately  refuses  to  believe  that  the 
'  wages  of  virtue '  can  '  be  dust,'  it  is  often  less  from  any 
private  reckoning  about  his  own  wages  than  from  a  dis- 
interested aversion  to  a  universe  so  fundamentally  irra- 
tional that  '  Good  for  the  individual '  is  not  ultimately 
identified  with  '  Universal  Good.' "  The  assumption  of 
such  a  moral  order,  maintained  by  a  moral  Governor,  is 
accordingly  accepted  as  "  an  hypothesis  logically  neces- 
sary to  avoid  a  fundamental  contradiction  in  one  chief 
department  of  our  thought."2  Even  in  this  aspect,  the 
problem  is  not  exclusively  modern.  The  coincidence  of 
outward  prosperity  with  righteousness,  individual  and 
national,  was  the  axiom  of  the  Hebrew  consciousness — 
an  axiom  whose  verification  in  national  and  individual 
experience  cost  the  Hebrews  much  painful  thought,  and 
often  seemed  to  be  threatened  with  final  disappointment. 
Even  the  lesson,  learned  by  bitter  experience,  that  man 
must  be  content  to  '  serve  God  for  nought,'  never  carried 
with  it  for  them  the  definitive  divorce  of  righteousness 
and  prosperity.  Their  intense  moral  earnestness  per- 
sisted in  its  demand  for  an  ultimate  harmony  of  external 
fortune  with  inward  merit ;  sin  and  suffering,  goodness 
and  happiness,  must,  they  felt,  ultimately  coincide. 
And,  like  our  modern  Kantians  and  Evolutionists,  they 
were  compelled  to  adjourn  to  the  future,  now  of  the  com- 
munity, now  of  the  individual,  the  solution  of  a  problem 
which  their  present  experience  always  left  unsolved. 

Yet  we  cannot  help  feeling  that  this  is  not  the  most 
adequate,  or  the  worthiest,  statement  of  the  problem. 
There  is  a  feeling  of  externality  about  such  a  moral 
universe  as  that  of  the  Hebrews,  of  Kant,  or  of  Pro- 

1  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  p.  504  (3rd  ed.)  2  Ibid.,  p.  505. 


416  Metaphysical  Implications 

fessor  Sidgwick ;  such  a  God  is  a  kind  of  dcus  ex 
machind,  after  all — an  agent  introduced  from  outside 
into  a  scheme  of  things  which  had  seemed  already  com- 
plete, to  re- adjust  an  order  already  adjusted.  Especially 
in  Kant  we  feel  that,  in  spite  of  all  his  skilful  pleading,, 
there  is  a  fall  from  the  elevated  and  consistent  Stoicism 
of  his  ethics  to  the  quasi-Hedonism  of  his  moral  theology ; 
the  old  keynote  sounds  no  longer.  Nor  is  his  God  much 
better  than  '  a  chief-of-police  of  the  moral  universe.'  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  ancient  Greek  statement  of  the 
problem  was  much  more  adequate  than  the  characteristic 
modern  version  of  it,  and  that  the  Greek  solution  is  also 
more  suggestive  of  the  true  direction  in  which  the  solu- 
tion must  be  sought. 

6.  Its  ancient  statement. — The  Greek  problem  was 
that  of  an  adequate  sphere  for  the  exercise  of  virtue.  In 
general  this  sphere  was  found  in  the  State,  and  Plato 
held  that  there  was  no  contradiction  more  tragic  than 
that  of  a  great  nature  condemned  to  live  in  a  mean 
State ;  great  virtue  needs  a  great  sphere  for  its  due 
exercise.  And  the  Greek  State,  at  its  best,  did  provide 
for  the  few  a  splendid,  and  to  the  Greeks  a  satisfying, 
sphere  for  the  exercise  of  human  virtue.  It  enlarged 
and  ennobled,  without  annulling,  the  life  of  the  individual 
citizen.  For  Aristotle,  though  the  State  is  still  the  ideal 
sphere  of  virtuous  activity,  and  ethics  itself  "  a  sort  of 
political  inquiry,"  the  problem  has  already  changed  its 
aspect,  and  become  more  directly  a  problem  of  the 
individual  life.  To  him  the  question  is  that  of  the 
opportunity  for  the  actualisation  of  the  virtue  or  ex- 
cellence which  exists  potentially  in  every  man.  The 
actualisation  (ivljoyeta)  of  virtue  is  for  him  of  supreme 
importance ;  and  whether  any  man's  potential  virtue 
shall  be  actualised  or  not,  is  determined  not  by  the 
man  himself  but  by  his  circumstances — his  initial  and 
acquired  equipment,  his  furniture  of  fortune,  wealth, 


The  Problem  of  God  417 

friends,  honour,  personal  advantage,  and  the  like.  These 
things  constitute  the  man's  ethical  opportunity,  and  de- 
termine the  scale  of  his  ethical  achievement.  A  good, 
or  passively  virtuous,  man  might  "  sleep  all  his  life," 
might  never  have  a  fit  opportunity  of  realising  his 
goodness,  never  find  a  sufficient  stage  for  the  demon- 
stration of  his  powers  in  act,  or  never  find  his  part  in 
the  drama  of  human  history.  The  tide  of  fortune  might 
never  for  him  come  to  the  flood,  and,  as  it  ebbed  away 
from  him,  he  might  well  feel  that  it  carried  with  it  all 
his  hopes  of  high  enterprise  and  achievement.  Here 
Aristotle  seems  to  find  a  baffling  and  inexplicable  surd 
in  human  life — a  '  given '  element  which,  in  a  moment, 
may  wreck  men's  lives,  and  which  must  fill  some  men 
from  the  first  with  despair,  or  at  best  must  imprison 
their  lives  within  the  narrowest  horizon.  In  view  of 
this,  we  are  not  masters  even  of  our  own  characters. 
Character  is  the  result  of  exercise ;  it  is  not  the  swift, 
but  they  who  run,  that  receive  the  crown  of  virtue.  But 
we  may  never  be  allowed  on  the  course,  or  we  may  not 
have  the  strength  that  is  needed  for  the  race.  The 
ethical  end  cannot  be  compassed,  at  least  it  cannot  be 
fully  compassed,  without  the  external  aid  of  fortune; 
and  fortune,  Aristotle  seems  to  feel  almost  as  irre- 
sistibly as  Professor  Huxley  feels  about  nature,  is  ethi- 
cally indifferent.  The  most  a  man  can  do  is,  he  says, 
to  make  the  best  use  of  the  gifts  of  fortune,  such  as 
they  are,  "just  as  a  good  general  uses  the  forces  at  his 
command  to  the  best  advantage  in  war,  and  a  good 
cobbler  makes  the  best  shoe  with  the  leather  that  is 
given  him."1  But  oftentimes  the  forces  available  are 
all  too  scant  for  any  deed  of  greatness,  and  the  leather 
is  such  that  only  a  very  indifferent  shoe  can  be  made 
out  of  it.  So  that,  after  all,  it  is  rather  in  the  noble 
bearing  of  the  chances  of  life  than  in  any  certainty 
of  actual  achievement,  that  we  ought  to  place  our 

*  Nic.  Eth.,  L  10  (13). 
2  D 


418  Metaphysical  Implications 

estimate  of  true  nobility  of  soul.  Even  in  the  most 
untoward  circumstances — in  those  calamities  which  mar 
and  mutilate  the  felicity  of  life  by  causing  pains  and 
hindrances  to  its  various  activities — nobility  may  shine 
out  when  a  person  bears  the  weight  of  accumulated 
misfortunes  with  calmness,  not  from  insensibility  but 
from  innate  dignity  and  greatness  of  soul. 

In  this  attitude  of  Aristotle  we  are  already  very  near 
the  position  of  the  Stoics.  The  problem  of  fortune,  which 
Aristotle  never  completely  solved,  became  the  chief  pro- 
blem of  his  successors;  and  the  Stoics  and  Epicureans 
found  in  part  the  same  solution  of  it.  The  only  salvation 
from  the  evil  chances  of  life  is  to  be  found,  they  agree, 
in  a  self-contained  life,  which  is  independent  of  outward 
change  and  circumstance.  The  life  of  the  wise  man  is  a 
closed  sphere,  with  its  centre  within  the  man  himself ; 
his  mind  to  him  a  kingdom  is,  he  is  his  own  sufficient 
sphere.  For  the  outward  sphere  has  become  manifestly 
inadequate ;  the  splendid  life  of  the  Greek  States  has 
disappeared  in  a  narrow  provincialism.  Fortune  has 
played  havoc  with  man's  life,  and  shattered  the  fabric  of 
his  brave  endeavours.  The  lesson  is  that  man  must  find 
his  good,  if  he  is  to  find  it  at  all,  entirely  within  himself, 
and  must  place  no  confidence  in  the  course  of  outward 
things.  And  has  he  not  the  secret  of  happiness  in  his 
own  bosom  ?  Is  it  not  for  him  to  dictate  the  terms  of 
his  own  true  welfare  ?  Can  he  not  shield  himself  from 
fortune's  darts  in  a  complete  armour  of  indifference  and 
impassibility  ? 

Yet  this  is  not  the  final  resting-place,  either  for  Aris- 
totle or  for  the  Stoics.  The  problem  of  fortune,  it  is 
quite  manifest,  is  not  yet  solved,  nor  can  the  attempt  to 
solve  it  be  abandoned.  There  is  a  very  real  kinship  and 
community,  it  is  felt,  between  man's  nature  and  the 
nature  of  things.  The  latter  is  not  the  sphere  of  blind 
chance,  after  all ;  its  essence  is,  like  man's,  rational. 
"  Live  according  to  nature  "  means,  for  the  Stoic,  "  Live 


The  Problem  of  God  419 

according  to  the  common  reason,  obey  that  rational  order 
which  embraces  thy  life  and  nature's  too."  Nothing 
happens  by  chance,  everything  befalls  as  is  most  fit ;  and 
man's  true  salvation  is  to  discover  the  fitness  of  each 
thing  that  befalls  him,  and,  in  all  things,  to  order  his 
behaviour  in  accordance  with  the  eternal  fitness  of  the 
divine  order.  Fortune  is  in  reality  the  providence  of  God ; 
no  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man,  his  affairs  are  not 
indifferent  to  God.  The  universe  is  itself  divine ;  it  is  the 
perfect  expression  of  the  divine  reason,  and  therefore  the 
home  of  the  rational  spirit  of  man.  Nor  is  man,  after  all, 
alone,  or  his  life  a  solitary  and  exclusive  one,  contained 
within  the  narrow  bounds  of  his  individual  selfhood. 
Without  ever  straying  beyond  himself,  he  can  become  a 
citizen  of  a  fairer  and  greater  City  than  any  Greek  or 
earthly  State  —  a  civitas  Dei,  the  goodly  fellowship  of 
humanity,  yea,  of  the  universe  itself ;  for  his  life  and  the 
life  of  the  universe  are  in  their  essence  one.  This  splen- 
did and  spacious  home  it  was  that  the  Stoics  built  for 
themselves  out  of  the  wreck  of  worldly  empire  and  the 
shattering  of  their  earlier  hopes ;  such  sweet  uses  hath 
adversity  for  the  human  spirit.  Aristotle's  problem  seems 
very  near  its  solution. 

Aristotle  had  himself  suggested  this  Stoic  solution,  and 
had  even,  in  his  own  bold  metaphysic,  transcended  it. 
He  could  not  stop  short  of  a  perfect  unification  of  man's 
life  with  the  life  of  nature,  and  of  both  with  the  divine 
universal  Life.  The  universe  has,  for  him,  one  end  and 
one  perfect  fulfilment.  The  form  of  all  things,  and  the 
form,  if  we  may  say  so,  of  human  life,  are  the  same ;  the 
form  of  the  universe  is  reason.  And  the  apparent  un- 
reason, the  '  matter  '  of  the  world  and  of  morality,  is  only 
reason  in  the  making  or  becoming.  It  is  the  promise 
and  the  potency  of  reason,  and  will  in  due  time  demon- 
strate its  rationality  by  a  perfect  fulfilment  and  actual- 
isation.  The  process  of  nature  and  the  process  of  human 
life  are  really  only  stages  in  the  one  entirely  rational 


420  Metaphysical  Implications 

process  of  the  divine  life.  To  God  all  things  turn,  after 
his  perfection  they  all  aspire,  in  him  they  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being. 

And  if  we  ask,  What,  then,  of  man's  place  in  nature  ? 
we  have  Aristotle's  answer  in  his  doctrine  of  the  human 
ipvxn-  It  is  the  '  form '  of  the  body,  its  perfect  actual- 
isation  or  IvrtXexeia.  ^ay,  tne  true  soul  of  man,  the 
soul  of  his  soul,  is  that  same  active  and  creative  reason, 
that  pure  activity  of  thought,  which  is  the  alpha  and 
the  omega  of  being.  In  fulfilling  the  end  of  his  own 
nature,  therefore,  man  is  a  co-worker  with  God  in  the 
fulfilment  of  the  universal  end.  For  the  end  of  the 
universe  is  the  same  as  the  end  of  human  life.  Man, 
in  virtue  of  his  higher  endowment  of  reason,  can  accom- 
plish with  intelligence  and  insight  that  which  the  lower 
creation  accomplishes  in  its  own  blind  but  unerring  way. 
So  that  ultimately  man  cannot  fail  of  his  end,  any  more 
than  nature  can  fail  of  hers;  let  him  link*  his  fortunes 
with  those  of  the  universe  itself,  and  he  cannot  fail. 
The  cosmic  process  is  not  indifferent  to  man,  who  is  its 
product  and  fulfilment,  and  also,  in  a  sense,  its  master 
and  its  end.  Aristotle,  it  is  true,  never  brings  together 
his  ethical  doctrine  of  fortune  as  an  external  and  indif- 
ferent power  which  may  as  readily  check  as  forward 
the  fulfilment  of  man's  moral  nature  and  his  attainment 
of  his  true  end,  and  his  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the 
unity  of  the  divine  or  universal  end  with  the  end  of 
human  life  —  a  unity  which  would  imply  that  there 
cannot  be,  in  man  any  more  than  in  nature,  such  a 
thing  as  permanently  unfulfilled  capacity,  or  potentiality 
that  is  not  perfectly  aetualised.  But  the  profound  mean- 
ing of  his  total  thought  about  the  universe  would  seem 
to  be  that  man  must  share  in  the  fruition  of  the  great 
consummation,  that  without  his  participation  it  would 
be  no  consummation  at  all,  and  that  into  that  diviner 
order  the  lower  order  (or  disorder)  of  outward  accident, 
in  which  his  life  had  seemed  to  be  confined  and  thwarted 


The  Problem  of  God  421 

of  its  fulfilment,  must  ultimately  disappear.  Thus  inter- 
preted, the  thought  of  Aristotle  would  at  once  anticipate 
and  transcend  the  Stoic  philosophy  of  man  and  nature, 
in  the  measure  that  the  Aristotelian  theology  anticipates 
and  transcends  the  theology  of  the  Porch. 

7.  The  Christian  solution.  —  Christianity  offers  its 
own  bold  solution  of  the  problem  we  are  considering. 
It  knows  no  ultimate  distinction  between  the  course 
of  the  world  and  the  course  of  the  moral  life,  but  sees 
all  things  working  together  for  good,  and  discerns  in 
each  event  of  human  history  a  manifestation  of  the 
divine  Providence.  The  natural  order  is  incorporated 
in  the  moral ;  and  even  where,  to  the  Greek  mind,  and 
to  the  pagan  mind  in  general,  nature  seemed  to  thwart 
and  retard  morality,  it  is  felt  most  surely  to  advance 
moral  interests.  Misfortune  and  calamity,  instead  of 
being  obstacles  to  the  development  of  goodness,  are  the 
very  soil  of  its  best  life — the  atmosphere  it  needs  to 
bring  it  to  perfection.  Not  the  wealthy,  but  the  poor ; 
not  the  prosperous,  but  the  persecuted;  not  the  high- 
minded,  but  the  lowly,  the  weary,  and  the  heavy-laden, 
are  called  blessed.  A  new  office  is  found  for  suffering 
and  calamity  in  the  life  of  goodness ;  man  is  made  per- 
fect through  suffering.  While  Aristotle  thought  that 
length  of  days  was  needed  for  a  complete  life,  Chris- 
tianity has  taught  us  that — 

"  In  short  measures  life  may  perfect  be." 

Nor  is  salvation  found  any  longer  in  a  mere  Stoical  in- 
difference or  apathy  to  misfortune ;  such  a  bearing  is  no 
real  bearing  of  calamity,  but  rather  a  cowardly  retreat 
from  it.  It  is  in  the  actual  suffering  of  evil  that  Chris- 
tianity finds  the  '  soul  of  good  '  in  it.  Its  office  is  dis- 
ciplinary and  purifying ;  and  though  "  no  chastening  for 
the  present  seemeth  to  be  joyous  but  grievous,  neverthe- 
less afterward  it  yieldeth  the  peaceable  fruit  of  righteous- 


422  Metaphysical  Implications 

ness  unto  them  which  are  exercised  thereby."  Instead 
of  negating,  or  at  best  limiting,  the  exercise  of  virtue 
(as  Aristotle  thought),  calamity  provides  the  very  oppor- 
tunity of  its  best  and  highest  exercise,  and  therefore 
must  be  regarded  as  the  most  perfect  instrument  in  the 
development  of  goodness.1 

8.  The  ideal  and  the  real. — If  philosophy  finds  itself 
precluded  from  going  the  whole  length  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  divine  Providence,  yet  it  seems  to  me  that 
Christianity  puts  into  the  hands  of  philosophy  a  clue 
which  it  would  do  well  to  follow  up,  especially  since 
the  conception  is  not  altogether  strange,  but  is  the  com- 
plement and  development  of  the  Aristotelian  and  Stoic 
theology  which  has  just  been  sketched.  All  that  we 
are  concerned  at  this  point  to  maintain  is  the  specu- 
lative legitimacy  and  necessity  of  the  demand  for  a 
moral  order,  somehow  pervading  and  using  (in  how- 
ever strange  and  unexpected  wise)  the  order  of  nature, 
and  thus  making  possible  for  the  moral  being  the  ful- 
filment of  his  moral  task,  the  perfect  realisation  of  all 
his  moral  capacities.  That  the  universe  is  not  foreign 
to  the  ethical  spirit  of  man,  or  indifferent  to  it,  but  its 
sphere  and  atmosphere,  the  soil  of  its  life,  the  breath 
of  its  being ;  that  "  the  soul  of  the  world  is  just,"  that 
might  is  ultimately  right,  and  the  divine  and  universal 
Power  a  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness ;  that  so  far 
from  the  nature  of  things  being  antagonistic  to  morality, 
"morality  is  the  nature  of  things," — this  at  least,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  the  metaphysical  implication  of  morality 

1  Addison  has  given  quaint  expression  to  this  Christian  estimate  of  so- 
called  misfortune  in  his  fine  allegory  of  The  Golden  Scales :  "  I  observed 
one  particular  weight  lettered  on  both  sides,  and  upon  applying  myself  to 
the  reading  of  it,  I  found  on  one  side  written,  '  In  the  dialect  of  men,'  and 
underneath  it,  '  CALAMITIES  ' :  on  the  other  side  was  written,  '  In  the  lan- 
guage of  the  gods,'  and  underneath,  'BLESSINGS.'  I  found  the  intrinsic 
value  of  this  weight  to  be  much  greater  than  I  imagined,  for  it  overpowered 
health,  wealth,  good  fortune,  and  many  other  weights,  which  were  much 
more  ponderous  in  my  hand  than  the  other." 


The  Problem  of  God  423 

as  we  know  it.  A  moral  universe,  an  absolute  moral 
Being,  is  the  indispensable  environment  of  the  ethical 
life,  without  which  it  cannot  attain  its  perfect  growth. 
A  'first  actuality '  of  goodness,  as  of  intelligence,  is  the 
presupposition  of,  and  the  only  sufficient  security  for,  the 
perfect  actualisation  of  moral  as  of  intellectual  capacity. 
Philosophy  must  acknowledge  the  right  of  a  moral  being 
to  self-realisation  and  completeness  of  ethical  life,  and 
must  substantiate  his  claim  upon  the  universe,  whose 
child  he  is,  that  it  shall  be  the  medium  and  not  the 
obstacle  and  negation  of  his  proper  life.  This  ultimate 
and  inalienable  human  right  is  not  a  '  right  to  bliss,'  '  to 
welfare  and  repose,'  but  a  right  to  self-fulfilment  and 
self-realisation.  To  deny  this  right,  to  invalidate  this 
claim,  is  either  to  naturalise,  that  is,  to  de-moralise  man, 
or  to  convict  the  universe  of  failure  to  perfect  its  own 
work,  to  say  that,  in  the  end,  the  part  contradicts  the 
whole.  Our  reasons  for  dissenting  from  the  former  alter- 
native have  already  been  given,  and  belong  to  our  entire 
ethical  theory ;  to  assent  to  the  latter  would  be  to  deny 
the  reality  of  the  universe,  and  to  surrender  the  possi- 
bility of  philosophy  itself.  Accordingly,  we  seem  not 
only  warranted,  but  compelled,  to  maintain  the  moral 
constitution  of  the  universe.  This  is,  in  the  words  of 
a  recent  French  writer,  "  the  only  hypothesis  which  ex- 
plains the  totality  of  phenomena,  moral  phenomena  in- 
cluded, which  grasps  the  harmony  between  them  and 
us,  which  gives,  with  this  unity  and  harmony,  clear- 
ness to  the  mind,  strength  to  the  will,  sweetness  to 
the  soul."  *  Fichte's  question  is  most  pertinent :  "  While 
nothing  in  nature  contradicts  itself,,  is  man  alone  a 
contradiction  ? " 2  A  moral  universe  is  the  ultimate 
basis  of  our  judgments  of  moral  value,  without  which 
the  objective  validity  of  these  judgments  cannot  be 
established. 

J  Ricardou,  De  I'Idtal,  p.  325. 

'  Popular  Works,  voL  i.  p.  346  (Eng.  trans.) 


424  Metaphysical  Implications 

The  same  conclusion  is  reached  by  pressing  the  inves- 
tigation of  the  ultimate  significance  of  morality  itself. 
We  have  seen  that  the  moral  life  is  in  its  essence  an 
ideal  life — a  life  of  aspiration  after  the  realisation  of 
that  which  is  not  yet  attained,  determined  by  the  unceas- 
ing antithesis  of  the  '  is'  and  the  '  ought-to-be.'  What, 
then,  we  are  forced  at  last  to  ask,  is  the  source  and 
warrant  of  this  moral  ideal,  of  this  imperious  '  ought-to- 
be '?  To  answer  that  it  is  entirely  subjective,  the  mov- 
ing shadow  of  our  actual  attainment,  would  be  irrevo- 
cably to  break  the  spell  of  the  ideal,  and  to  make  it  a 
mere  foolish  will-o'-the-wisp  which,  once  discovered, 
could  cheat  us  no  longer  out  of  our  sensible  satisfaction 
with  the  actual.  An  ideal,  with  no  foothold  in  the  real, 
would  be  the  most  unsubstantial  of  all  illusions.  As  Dr 
Martineau  has  strikingly  said :  "  Amid  all  the  sickly 
talk  about  '  ideals '  which  has  become  the  commonplace 
of  our  age,  it  is  well  to  remember  that,  so  long  as  they 
are  dreams  of  future  possibility,  and  not  faiths  in  pres- 
ent realities,  so  long  as  they  are  a  mere  self-painting  of 
the  yearning  spirit,  .  .  .  they  have  no  more  solidity  or 
steadiness  than  floating  air-bubbles,  gay  in  the  sunshine, 
and  broken  by  the  passing  wind."  What  is  needed  to 
give  the  ideal  its  proper  dignity  and  power  is  "  the  dis- 
covery that  your  gleaming  ideal  is  the  everlasting  real, 
no  transient  brush  of  a  fancied  angel  wing,  but  the  abid- 
ing presence  and  persuasion  of  the  Soul  of  souls." 1  The 
secret  of  the  power  of  the  moral  ideal  is  the  conviction 
which  it  carries  with  it  that  it  is  no  mere  ideal,  but  the 
expression,  more  or  less  perfect,  and  always  becoming 
more  perfect,  of  the  supreme  reality ;  that  "  the  rule  of 
right,  the  symmetries  of  character,  the  requirements  of 
perfection,  are  no  provincialisms  of  this  planet ;  they  are 
known  among  the  stars ;  they  reign  beyond  Orion  and 

1  Study  of  Religion,  vol.  i.  p.  12.  Cf.  Ricardou,  De  V Ideal,  p.  262  :  "  It  is 
not  enough  that  the  ideal  charm  the  imagination  by  its  poetry  ;  it  is  neces- 
sary that  it  satisfy  the  reason  by  its  truth,  its  objective  and  absolute  truth." 


The  Problem  of  God  425 

the  Southern  Cross;  they  are  wherever  the  universal 
Spirit  is."1  The  entire  preceding  discussion  serves  to 
show  that  to  make  morality  entirely  relative  and  sub- 
jective, to  give  a  merely  empirical  evolution  of  it,  is  to 
destroy  its  inner  essence,  and  to  miss  its  characteristic 
note.  That  note  is  the  ideal,  without  whose  constant 
presence  and  operation  moral  development  would  be 
impossible.  But  we  have  reserved  the  question  of  the 
origin  and  warrant  of  the  ideal  itself ;  and  when  we 
ask  it  to  produce  its  certificate  of  birth,  it  is  compelled 
to  refer  us  to  the  nature  of  things,  and  to  proclaim  that 
the  way  in  which  it  has  commanded  us  to  walk  is  the 
way  of  the  cosmos  itself,  the  way  of  the  divine  order. 
Thus  an  adequate  interpretation  of  morality  compels 
us  to  predicate  an  ultimate  and  absolute  moral  reality, 
a  supreme  ground  of  goodness  as  well  as  of  truth ;  and 
the  moral  idealism  which  we  have  maintained  against 
empirical  realism  in  ethics  brings  us  in  the  end  to  a 
moral  realism,  to  a  conviction  of  the  reality  of  the  moral 
ideal.  We  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  ideal 
is  not  simply  the  unreal,  but  the  expression  and  ex- 
ponent of  the  real;  that  what  on  our  side  of  it  is  the 
ideal  is,  on  its  further  side,  the  real;  that  behind  the 
'  ought '  lies  the  '  is,'  behind  our  insistent  '  ought-to-be  ' 
the  eternal  '  I  am '  of  the  divine  righteousness.  But 
that  supreme  moral  Eeality  we  can  only  apprehend  oil 
this,  its  human  side ;  its  further  side  we  may  not  see. 
"No  man  shall  see  God's  face  and  live";  the  full  vision 
would  scorch  man's  little  life  in  the  consuming  fire  of 
the  divine  perfection.  To  see  God,  we  must  be  like 
him ;  it  is  a  moral  rather  than  an  intellectual  appre- 
hension. Yet,  as  we  obey  the  '  ought-to-be,'  and  realise 
in  ourselves  the  ideal  good,  we  do  in  our  human  measure 
and  in  our  appropriate  human  way  come  to  the  fuller 
knowledge  of  the  divine  goodness.  The  veil  that  hides 
it  from  us,  the  veil  of  our  own  failure  and  imperfec- 

1  Martineau,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i.  p.  26. 


426  Metaphysical  Implications 

tion,  is  gradually  taken  away,  and  "  the  pure  in  heart 
see  God." 

To  make  the  antithesis  between  the  ideal  and  the  real 
final,  and  to  refuse  to  recognise  the  reality  of  the  ideal, 
is  to  betray  a  radical  misunderstanding  of  the  ideal  and 
of  its  relation  to  the  real.  We  must  distinguish  care- 
fully between  the  real  and  the  actual,  between  the  abso- 
lute and  eternal  real  and  the  empirical  and  historical 
actual.  The  ideal  is,  as  such,  always  opposed  to  the 
actual ;  but  this  does  not  prevent  its  being  the  exponent 
of  the  real.  Whence  comes  the  ideal  of  the  actual  but 
from  the  reality  or  true  being  of  the  actual  itself  ?  Thus 
the  ideal  brings  us  nearer  to  reality  than  the  actual ;  the 
one  is  a  more  perfect,  the  other  a  less  perfect,  expression 
of  the  single  reality  in  relation  to  which  both  stand,  and 
out  of  relation  to  which  the  distinction  between  them 
would  disappear.  For  that  distinction  must  be  inter- 
preted as  having  an  objective,  and  not  merely  a  sub- 
jective, basis  and  significance.  The  criticism  of  the 
actual,  if  it  is  to  be  valid,  must  be  objectively  grounded 
or  warranted.  "The  ideal,  founded  upon  the  reasoned 
and  positive  knowledge  of  the  essential  nature  of  being, 
is  at  once  true  and  possible ;  it  is  superior,  not  contrary, 
to  the  actual  fact ;  in  a  sense  it  is  truer  than  fact  itself ; 
for  it  is  fact  purified  and  transformed,  such  as  it  would 
be  if  nothing  opposed  its  development ;  it  is  reality  tend- 
ing to  its  complete  actualisation." x  The  ideal  is,  truly 
understood,  the  mirror  in  which  we  see  reflected  at  once 
the  real  and  the  actual;  it  is  founded  in  the  real,  and 
is  at  the  same  time  and  for  that  reason  the  heart  and 
truth  of  the  actual  The  ideal  or  potential  is  not  simply 
what  the  actual  is  not,  it  is  also  the  prophecy  and 
guarantee  of  what  the  actual  shall  be,  nay,  the  revela- 
tion of  what  in  its  essence  it  is — its  very  being,  its  ri 

1  Ricardou,  De  Vldtal,  p.  22.  Cf.  Edward  Caird,  Evolution  of  Religion, 
vol.  ii.  p.  229  :  "  The  ideal  reveals  itself  as  the  reality  which  is  hid  beneath 
the  immediate  appearance  of  things." 


The  Problem  of  God  427 

r\  v  tlvai.  The  '  ought '  of  morality  is  the  dictation  of  the 
ethical  whole  to  its  parts ;  for  the  true  nature  of  the 
parts  is  determined  by  the  nature  of  their  common  whole. 
It  is  only  the  empiricist  who  subordinates  the  ideal  to 
the  actual ;  who  sees  in  the  actual  the  only  real,  and  in 
the  whole  only  the  sum  of  the  parts.  But  evolution  it- 
self, in  its  philosophical  if  not  in  its  scientific  sense,  should 
teach  us  to  find  the  real  always  in,  or  rather  behind,  the 
ideal ;  never  in,  but  always  ahead  of,  the  actual.  The 
empirical  time-process,  if  it  has  a  meaning,  implies  an 
eternal  reality — a  being  of  the  becoming,  a  something 
that  becomes,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  entire 
process  of  development.  The  process  is  the  evolution, 
the  gradual  unfolding  or  appearing,  of  that  essential 
reality  which  is  its  constant  implication. 

9.  The  personality  of  God. — Such  an  interpretation 
of  moral  reality,  as  only  the  other  side  of  the  moral  ideal, 
enables  us  to  be  faithful  to  the  great  Kantian  principle  of 
the  essential  autonomy  of  the  moral  life.  It  is  a  principle 
divined  by  other  moralists,  by  Plato  and  Butler  especially, 
that  man  cannot  properly  acknowledge  subjection  to  any 
foreign  legislation,  but  is  for  ever  a  law  unto  himself,  his 
own  judge,  at  once  subject  and  sovereign  in  the  moral 
realm.  But  the  Kantian  autonomy  is  not  a  final  ex- 
planation of  morality.  How  comes  it,  we  must  still  ask, 
that  man  is  fitted  for  the  discharge  of  such  a  function ; 
whence  this  splendid  human  endowment  ?  Kant  does 
not  himself  connect  the  self-legislation  of  man  with  the 
divine  source  of  moral  government  in  the  universe ;  but 
his  doctrine  of  autonomy  teaches  us  that  the  connection 
must  be  no  external  one.  The  supreme  Head  of  the 
moral  universe,  he  who,  as  holy  and  not  placed  under 
duty,  is  only  sovereign  and  never  subject,  must  be  akin 
to  its  other  members  who  occupy  the  '  middle  state '  and 
are  subjects  as  well  as  sovereigns,  legislators  who  with 
difficulty  obey  the  laws  of  their  own  making.  But  what 


428  Metaphysical  Implications 

is  this  but  to  say  that  as  the  ideal  is  the  truth  of  the 
actual,  so  the  supreme  reality  can  only  be  the  perfect 
embodiment  and  realisation  of  the  ideal  ?  In  no  one  of 
these  three  terms  do  we  depart  from  the  single  concrete 
fact  of  moral  experience ;  abstract  any  one  of  them,  and 
that  concrete  experience  becomes  impossible. 

What  is  the  concrete  fact,  the  single  term  of  which 
these  three  are  only  aspects,  but  selfhood  or  personality  ? 
Behind  the  actual  there  is  the  ideal  self,  and  behind 
the  ideal  the  real  or  divine  Self.  The  whole  drift  of 
the  argument  serves  to  show  that,  in  essence,  God 
and  man  must  be  one,  that  God — the  supreme  moral 
source  and  principle,  the  alpha  and  the  omega  of  the 
moral  as  of  the  intellectual  life — is  the  eternally  perfect 
Personality,  in  whose  image  man  has  been  created,  and 
after  the  pattern  of  whose  perfect  nature,  the  archetypal 
essence  of  his  own,  he  must  unceasingly  strive  to  shape 
his  life.  Since  the  moral  ideal  is  an  ideal-  of  personality, 
must  not  the  moral  reality,  the  reality  of  which  that 
ideal  is  the  after-reflection  as  well  as  the  prophetic  hint, 
be  the  perfection  of  personality,  the  supreme  Person 
whose  image  we,  as  persons,  bear  and  are  slowly  and  with 
effort  inscribing  on  our  natural  individuality  ?  We  must 
thus  complete  the  Kantian  theory  of  autonomy  ;  that 
alone  does  not  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  moral  life.  Its 
unyielding  '  ought,'  its  categorical  imperative,  issues  not 
merely  from  the  depths  of  our  own  nature,  but  from  the 
heart  of  the  universe  itself.  We  are  self-legislative  :  but 
we  re-enact  the  law  already  enacted  by  God;  we  recognise, 
rather  than  constitute,  the  law  of  our  own  being.  The 
moral  law  is  the  echo  within  our  souls  of  the  voice  of  the 
Eternal,  whose  offspring  we  are. 

All  this,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  not  intended  as  mathe- 
matical demonstration.  Philosophy  never  is  an  '  exact 
science.'  Eather  it  is  offered  as  the  only  sufficient  hypo- 
thesis of  the  moral  life.  The  life  of  goodness,  the  ideal 
life,  is  necessarily  a  grand  speculation,  a  great  '  leap  in 


The  Problem  of  God  429 

the  dark.'  It  is  a  life  based  on  the  conviction  that  its 
source  and  its  issues  are  in  the  eternal  and  the  infinite. 
Its  mood  is  strenuous,  enthusiastic,  possessed  by  the  per- 
suasion of  its  own  infinite  value  and  significance.  The 
man  lives  under  the  power  of  the  idea  of  the  supreme 
reality  of  moral  distinctions,  and  of  their  absolute  sig- 
nificance. To  invalidate  the  hypothesis  would  be  to  in- 
validate the  life  which  is  based  upon  it.  But  the  life  of 
goodness  is  unyielding  in  its  demand  for  the  sanction,  in 
ultimate  divine  Keality,  of  its  own  ideal.  For  that  ideal 
is  infinite — to  make  it  finite  were  to  destroy  it ;  and,  as 
infinite,  it  must  seek  its  complement  in  the  infinite  or 
God.  And  if  a  life  thus  founded  is  in  reality  an  infinite 
Peradventure.  one  long  Question  always  repeated,  its  pro- 
gress brings  with  it  the  gradual  conversion  of  the  specu- 
lative peradventure  into  a  practical  certainty ;  the  per- 
sistent question  is  always  answering  itself.  The  touch 
of  this  transcendent  faith  alone  transfigures  man's  life 
with  a  divine  and  absolute  significance,  and  endows  it 
with  an  imperishable  and  unconquerable  strength.  "  If 
God  be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us  ? "  "  We  feel  we 
are  nothing,  but  Thou  wilt  help  us  to  be."  If  indeed  we 
are  in  alliance  with  the  Power  that  rules  the  universe,  we 
may  well  feel  confident  that  "  we  can  do  all  things  " ;  if 
we  must  go  this  warfare  at  our  own  charges,  we  may  as 
well  give  up  the  struggle.  But  the  very  essence  of  good- 
ness is  that  it  will  never  give  up,  but  perseveres  even  to 
the  end.  One  thing  alone  would  be  fatal  to  it — the  loss 
of  belief  in  its  own  infinite  reality,  in  its  own  absolute 
worth.  With  that  surrender  would  come  pessimism.  But 
again  the  good  life  never  is  pessimistic.1 

1  Cf.  Professor  James,  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  L  pp.  352, 
353  :  "  When,  however,  we  believe  that  a  God  is  there,  and  that  he  is  one 
of  the  claimants,  the  infinite  perspective  opens  out.  The  scale  of  the  sym- 
phony is  incalculably  prolonged.  The  more  imperative  ideals  now  begin 
to  speak  with  an  altogether  new  objectivity  and  significance,  and  to  utter 
the  infinitely  penetrating,  shattering,  tragically  challenging  mode  of  appeal. 
...  All  through  history,  in  the  periodical  conflicts  of  puritanism  with  the 


430  Metaphysical  Implications 

10.  Objections  to  anthropomorphism  :  (a)  from  the 
standpoint  of  natural  evolution. — The  objection  is 
made  to  such  an  ethical  or  personal  conception  of  God, 
that  it  is  anthropomorphic,  and  rests,  like  all  anthropo- 
morphism, upon  a  false  estimate  of  man's  place  in  the 
universe,  upon  such  an  exaggerated  view  of  his  import- 
ance as  is  fatal  to  the  vision  of  God  in  his  true  being. 
This  objection  comes  from  two  sides — from  that  of  Nat- 
uralism and  from  that  of  Transcendentalism,  or  from  that 
of  empirical  and  from  that  of  dialetical  Evolutionism. 
The  former  need  not  detain  us  long ;  the  latter  will 
require  more  careful  consideration. 

The  evolutionary  view  of  the  universe,  it  is  held,  em- 
phasises the  lesson  of  the  Copernican  change  of  stand- 
point. As  the  geo-centric  conception  was  supplanted  by 
the  helio-centric,  so  must  the  anthropo-centric  view  give 
place  to  the  cosmo- centric.  As  man  has  learned  that  his 
planet  is  not  the  centre  of  the  physical  universe,  he  is 
now  learning  that  he  himself  is  only  an  incident  in  the 
long  course  of  the  evolutionary  process.  His  imagined 
superiority  to  nature,  his  imagined  uniqueness  of  endow- 
ment, must  disappear  when  he  is  found  to  be  the  product 
of  natural  factors,  and  the  steps  are  traced  by  which  he 
has  become  what  he  is. 

But  such  a  deduction  from  the  theory  of  evolution  is 

don't-care  temper,  we  see  the  antagonism  of  the  strenuous  and  genial 
moods,  and  the  contrast  between  the  ethics  of  infinite  and  mysterious 
obligation  from  on  high,  and  those  of  prudence  and  the  satisfaction  of 
merely  finite  needs.  The  capacity  of  the  strenuous  mood  lies  so  deep 
down  among  our  natural  human  possibilities  that  even  if  there  were  no 
metaphysical  or  traditional  grounds  for  believing  in  a  God,  men  would 
postulate  one  simply  as  a  pretext  for  living  hard,  and  getting  out  of  the 
game  of  existence  its  keenest  possibilities  of  zest.  Our  attitude  towards 
concrete  evils  is  entirely  different  in  a  world  where  we  believe  there  are 
none  but  finite  demanders,  from  what  it  is  in  one  where  we  joyously  face 
tragedy  for  an  infinite  demander's  sake.  Every  sort  of  energy  and  en- 
durance, of  courage  and  capacity  for  handling  life's  evils,  is  set  free  in 
those  who  have  religious  faith.  For  this  reason  the  strenuous  type  of 
character  will,  on  the  battle-field  of  human  history,  always  outwear  the 
easy-going  type,  and  religion  will  drive  irreligion  to  the  wall." 


The  Problem  of  God  431 

the  result  of  a  misinterpretation  of  that  theory.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  theological  consequence  is  a  metaphysical 
deduction  from  scientific  statements,  rather  than  a  finding 
of  science  itself.  It  is  for  science  to  discover  the  laws 
of  phenomena,  or  the  manner  of  their  occurrence,  to 
describe  the  '  how '  of  the  world  and  of  man.  The  '  what ' 
and  the  '  why  '  are  questions  for  philosophy.  The  '  laws ' 
of  nature  which  science  discovers  may  be  at  the  same 
time  the  '  ways '  of  God,  the  modes  of  the  divine  activity. 
Why  should  not  evolution  by  natural  selection  be  the 
mode  of  the  divine  activity  ?  Even  if  evolution  be  the 
supreme  law  of  the  universe,  it  is  only  the  highest 
generalisation,  the  most  comprehensive  scientific  state- 
ment of  the  phenomenal  process.  But  the  process  does 
not  explain  itself.  The  '  genetic  method '  may  be  ade- 
quate for  science;  it  is  not  adequate  for  philosophy. 
Philosophy  can  never  rest  in  a  universe  of  mere  be- 
coming, it  must  explain  becoming  by  being  rather  than 
being  by  becoming.  Heraclitus,  as  a  philosophical  Evolu- 
tionist, recognised  this  in  his  assertion  of  the  law  or  path 
(oSoe)  of  the  process ;  and  Aristotle  saw  still  more  clearly 
that  the  process  of  evolution  is  not  self-explanatory,  that 
becoming  rests  on  being,  that  the  rt  eariv  of  the  actual 
presupposes  the  ovala  or  ri  fa  avat  of  the  essential  and 
ideal.  In  other  words,  we  understand  the  becoming  only 
when  we  refer  it  to  the  being  that  is  becoming.  The 
very  conception  of  evolution,  philosophically  understood, 
is  teleological.  Evolution  is  not  mere  change  or  indefinite 
movement ;  it  is  progress,  movement  in  a  certain  direc- 
tion, towards  a  definite  goal.  "  The  process  of  evolution 
is  itself  the  working  out  of  a  mighty  teleology,  of  which 
our  finite  understandings  can  fathom  but  the  scantiest 
rudiments." *  It  has  been  truly  said  that  "  evolution 
spells  purpose."  The  philosophic  lesson  of  Evolutionism 
is  the  constant  lesson  of  science  itself,  that  the  universe  is 
a  universe,  a  many  which  is  also  a  one,  a  whole  through 

1  J.  Fiske,  Cosmic  Philosophy,  vol.  ii.  p.  406. 


432  Metaphysical  Implications 

all  its  parts.  And  while  it  is  the  business  of  the  scien- 
tific Evolutionist  to  analyse  this  whole  into  its  component 
parts,  it  is  for  philosophy  to  make  the  synthesis  of  the 
parts  in  the  whole. 

To  discover  this  total  meaning  of  the  evolutionary 
process,  this  end  which  is  at  the  same  time  the  begin- 
ning of  the  entire  movement,  philosophy  must  reverse 
the  evolutionary  method,  as  understood  by  science,  and 
explain  the  lower  in  terms  of  the  higher,  rather  than  the 
higher  in  terms  of  the  lower ;  the  earlier  in  terms  of  the 
later,  rather  than  the  later  in  terms  of  the  earlier ;  the 
simpler  by  the  more  complex,  rather  than  the  more  com- 
plex by  the  simpler.  For  it  is  in  the  higher  and  later 
and  more  complex  that  we  see  the  unfolding  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  lower  and  earlier  and  simpler 
forms  of  being.  In  the  latter  we  discover  what  the 
former  had  it  in  them  to  become,  what  the  former  in 
promise  and  potency  already  were.  The  oak  explains 
the  acorn,  even  more  truly  than  the  acorn  explains  the 
oak.  Now  the  highest  and  latest  and  most  complex 
form  of  being  that  we  know  is  man ;  and  thus  teleology 
becomes  inevitably  anthropomorphism.  The  superiority 
of  the  anthropo-centric  view  to  the  cosmo-centric  receives 
a  new  vindication  when  we  see  that  man,  instead  of 
excluding,  includes  nature.  "  That  which  the  pre-Coper- 
nican  astronomy  naively  thought  to  do  by  placing  the 
home  of  man  in  the  centre  of  the  physical  universe, 
the  Darwinian  biology  profoundly  accomplishes  by  ex- 
hibiting man  as  the  terminal  fact  in  that  stupendous 
process  of  evolution  whereby  things  have  come  to  be 
what  they  are.  In  the  deepest  sense  it  is  as  true  as 
ever  it  was  held  to  be,  that  the  world  was  made  for 
man,  and  that  the  bringing  forth  in  him  of  those  qualities 
which  we  call  highest  and  holiest  is  the  final  cause  of 
creation."1  For  in  man  we  now  see,  with  a  new  dis- 
tinctness, the  microcosm  ;  he  sums  up  in  himself,  repeats 
J  J.  Fiske,  The  Ideot,  of  God,  Pref.,  p.  21. 


TJie  Problem  of  God  433 

and  transcends,  the  entire  process  of  the  world.  Human- 
ism is  more  adequate  than  Naturalism,  because  in  man 
we  are  nearer  the  whole,  and  nearer  the  centre,  than  in 
nature.  Evolutionism  sends  us,  for  the  explanation  of 
nature,  from  nature  to  man.  The  continuity  of  the 
process  of  evolution  in  nature  and  in  man  is  a  new 
vindication  of  anthropomorphism.  As  long  as  man 
could  separate  himself  from  nature,  and  regard  himself 
as  unique,  a  Melchisedec  birth,  he  had  no  right  to 
interpret  the  process  of  nature  in  terms  of  himself ;  the 
unity  of  man  and  nature  which  science  is  slowly  estab- 
lishing is  the  vindication  of  that  right.  It  does  not 
matter  where  man's  home  may  be,  at  the  centre  or  the 
circumference  of  the  physical  system ;  it  does  not  matter 
what  his  history  has  been,  or  by  what  slow  stages  he  has 
become  what  he  is.  It  is  in  what  he  is,  and  always  in 
promise  and  potency  was,  that  man's  supreme  importance 
lies.  The  Darwinian,  like  the  Copernican,  change  of 
standpoint  has  forced  us  to  revise  our  conception  of 
man's  place  in  nature,  of  his  temporal  as  well  as  of  his 
spatial  place.  But  his  essential  being  shines  out  all  the 
more  clearly  in  the  changed  light. 

If  we  regard  the  universe  as  one  continuous  evolution, 
we  must  find  in  man  the  key  to  the  entire  process.  For 
while  in  the  organic  we  find  the  fulfilment  and  raison 
d'etre  of  the  inorganic,  the  end  to  which  the  latter  is  a 
means,  in  the  rational  soul  of  man  we  must,  with  Aris- 
totle, discover  that  for  the  realisation  of  which  his  body 
exists  ((Tw/zaroc  IvTfXi^fia).  The  course  of  evolution,  as 
we  can  empirically  trace  it,  should  teach  us  this.  Till 
man  is  reached,  there  is  no  stopping  anywhere ;  each 
species  seems  to  exist  only  as  a  step  towards  the  next. 
Nature  seems  to  be  not  merely  'careless  of  the  single 
life,'  but  to  be  careless  even  of  'the  type.'  But  with 
man  the  movement  seems  to  change  its  course,  and  the 
progress  appears  to  be  inwards  rather  than  onwards.  The 
human  species  once  evolved,  the  function  of  evolution 

2  E 


434  Metaphysical  Implications 

seems  to  be  the  perfecting  of  this  species.  The  material 
world  seems  to  exist  for  the  body  of  man,  and  man's 
body  for  his  soul.  "  On  earth  there  is  nothing  great  but 
man :  in  man  there  is  nothing  great  but  mind."  Man 
seems  indeed  to  be  the  microcosm,  the  focal  point  of 
the  evolutionary  process,  the  universe  itself  in  miniature. 
It  seems  as  if  in  his  perfection  it  attained  its  end,  and 
accomplished  its  destiny. 

11.  (b)  From  the  standpoint  of  dialectical  evolu- 
tion. —  But  the  charge  of  anthropomorphism  comes 
from  the  Transcendentalists  as  well  as  from  the  Natu- 
ralists, from  the  dialectical  as  well  as  from  the  empirical 
Evolutionists.  Absolute  Idealism  has  no  place  for  per- 
sonality, or  at  any  rate  for  a  plurality  of  selves,  human 
and  divine.  It  is  difficult  to  define  Hegelian  orthodoxy, 
but  it  seems  to  demand  an  impersonal  view  of  both  God 
and  man.  God  becomes  either  the  One  which  is  not 
the  many,  or  the  All,  the  universal  process  itself.  Both 
views  are  found,  I  think,  in  the  latest  English  exposition 
of  Hegelian  theology,  Dr  Edward  Caird's  Gifford  Lec- 
tures on  The  Evolution  of  Religion.  On  the  one  hand,  it 
is  maintained  that  we  must  not  conceive  God  in  terms 
either  of  the  object  or  of  the  subject,  that  Naturalism 
and  Monotheism  are  alike  inadequate.  God,  being  the 
principle  of  unity  that  underlies  both  subject  and  object, 
must  not  be  identified  with  either.  The  result  would 
seem  to  be  the  impossibility  of  conceiving  God  at  all 
If,  in  order  to  think  God,  we  must  think  away  all  the 
reality  we  know,  it  is  clear  that  we  cannot  know  God  at 
all.  A  mere  principle  of  unity,  beyond  the  dualism  of 
subject  and  object,  is  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
Spencerian  Absolute — neither  material  nor  spiritual,  but 
the  unknown  and  unknowable  basis  alike  of  material 
and  spiritual  phenomena.  Mr  Caird  is  evidently  con- 
scious of  this  difficulty,  and  tries  to  answer  it :  "  What, 
it  is  asked,  can  we  make  of  a  Being  who  is  neither  to  be 


The  Problem  of  God  435 

perceived  or  imagined  as  an  object,  nor  to  be  conceived 
and  determined  as  a  subject,  but  only  as  the  unity  in 
which  all  difference  begins  and  ends  ?  Must  we  not 
content  ourselves  with  the  bare  acknowledgment  of 
such  a  Being,  and  bow  our  heads  before  the  inscrut- 
able ? "  The  answer  is,  that  though  "  in  a  sense  such 
a  universal  must  be  beyond  knowledge,  ...  it  is  the 
ground  on  which  we  stand,  the  atmosphere  which  sur- 
rounds us,  the  light  by  which  we  see,  and  the  heaven 
that  shuts  us  in."1  But  if  the  God  of  Idealism  must 
remain  mere  indeterminate  Being,  a  Something  of  which 
we  cannot  predicate  any  attributes,  Idealism  has  only 
brought  us  round  by  a  new  path  to  Agnosticism.  At 
best,  such  a  principle  of  unity  could  be  only  the  form, 
of  our  knowledge,  and  a  form  into  which  we  are  not 
allowed  to  put  any  content  must  needs  remain  empty 
and  abstract. 

The  only  escape  from  this  formalism  of  a  mere  prin- 
ciple of  unity  seems  to  lie  in  the  identification  of  God 
with  the  process  of  experience,  the  system  of  relations, 
the  dialectical  movement  of  reason  in  nature  and  in  man. 
God  thus  becomes  the  All  regarded  as  One,  the  Whole, 
the  Universe  itself.  Now  since  this  Whole,  to  be  inter- 
preted as  such — that  is,  as  the  unity  of  the  all — must  be 
regarded  as  the  rational  order  which  makes  the  cosmos 
a  cosmos,  the  result  is  Pan-logism.  Of  this  position  we 
have  various  statements.  To  Hegel  himself,  God  is  the 
Absolute  Idea — the  self-contained  and  self -completed 
Thought  which  lives  and  moves  to  its  self-realisation  in 
'  all  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought.'  To  Mr 
Caird,  God  is  neither  subject  nor  object,  but  the  higher 
term  presupposed  in  and  containing  both.  This  Absolute 
is  obviously  Kant's  'unity  of  apperception,'  left  alone 
after  the  withdrawal  of  the  Kantian  '  things-in-them- 
selves,'  objective  and  subjective  alike.  For  Kant  him- 
self this  was  the  mere  form  of  experience,  the  principle 

1  Evolution  of  Religion,  voL  L  p.  153. 


436  Metaphysical  Implications 

of  its  possibility,  and  was  not  to  be  substantiated  as  a 
being  outside  experience.  If,  therefore,  we  deny  the 
reality  of  Kant's  noumenal  or  supra-experiential  world,1 
there  remains  what  was  for  Kant  himself  the  only  know- 
able  reality,  the  rational  system  of  experience  itself. 
The  '  thinking  thing '  disappears,  with  the  '  objects  '  of  its 
thought,  in  '  thought '  itself ;  the  real  is  the  rational ;  form 
is  filled  with  content,  because  content  and  form  are  one. 

If  the  former  view  led  us  to  the  Eleatic  unity  of 
indeterminate  '  being,'  this  brings  us  to  the  Heracleitean 
unity  of  mere  '  becoming.'  This  version  of  Hegeliauism 
is  indeed  essentially  a  revival  of  Heracleiteanism.  Noth- 
ing is,  everything  becomes ;  the  process  itself  is  the  en- 
tire reality,  and  the  process  is  rational.  It  is  instructive 
to  notice  how  near  '  Pan-logism '  thus  comes  to  '  Pan- 
phenomenalism.'  The  one  theory  interprets  the  process 
rationally,  the  other  empirically ;  but  in  both  alike  the 
process  is  everything.  But  Heracleiteanism  is  no  more 
adequate  than  Eleaticism.  Becoming  implies  being,  as 
being  implies  becoming ;  either  alone  is  a  half-truth. 
Thought  without  a  thinker,  relations  between  nothing, 
order  without  an  orderer,  are  unintelligible.  To  hypos- 
tatise  the  thought,  the  relation,  the  order,  is  the  very 
acme  of  scholastic  Realism. 

This  impersonal  and  merely  dynamical  conception  of 
the  Absolute  Reality  is  connected  inseparably  with  an 
impersonal  and  dynamical  view  of  man.  As  '  mind ' 
was  for  Spinoza  only  idea  corporis  or  idea  idece  corporis, 
a  collective  name  for  the  'ideas'  or  'states,'  but  rep- 
resenting no  '  substantial '  reality,  so  for  the  Hegelian 
school  is  the  thinker  resolved  into  his  thought.  The 
subject  has  no  more  reality  than  the  object;  both  are 
aspects  or  modes  of  the  Absolute  which  contains  them. 
But  if,  as  I  have  tried  to  maintain,2  we  cannot  resolve 

1  From  what  follows  it  will  be  seen  that  I  am  not  here  contending  for 
the  rehabilitation  of  the  Kantian  Ding-an-sich. 
3  Supra,  part  iii.  ch.  i.  §§  6,  7. 


The  Problem  of  God  437 

the  finite  subject  into  its  experience,  whether  intellec- 
tual or  moral,  no  more  can  we  identify  the  Absolute  with 
experience,  or  with  the  process  of  the  actual.  The 
very  conception  of  '  experience '  implies  a  reference  to  a 
subject  or  self,  permanent  amid  its  ceaseless  flux,  and 
never  ceasing  to  distinguish  itself,  as  one  and  identical, 
from  the  changing  manifold  of  that  experience.  That 
the  ultimate  reality  should  be  found  by  transcendental 
Idealism  in  experience  itself,  is  one  more  example  of 
how,  in  the  history  of  thought,  philosophical  extremes 
may  meet. 

If,  however,  Hegelianism  is  to  maintain  itself  as  an 
idealistic  and  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe,  it 
is  obvious  that  it  must  be  by  accepting  the  subject  as  a 
more  adequate  exponent  than  the  object  of  the  ultimate 
or  divine  Eeality.  Hegel  himself  regarded  God  as  the 
absolute  Subject,  and  conceived  the  great  advantage  of 
his  system  over  Spinozism  to  lie  in  the  substitution  of 
'  subject '  for  '  substance '  as  the  term  for  the  ultimate 
reality.  It  is  indeed  the  consequence  of  Hegel's  evolu- 
tionary view  of  the  universe,  that  in  the  higher  stage, 
that  of  human  self-consciousness,  the  manifestation  of 
ultimate  reality  should  be  more  adequate  than  at  the 
lower  stage  of  mere  nature.  It  is  also  of  the  essence  of 
Idealism,  as  distinguished  from  Spinozism,  to  perceive 
that  spirit  and  nature,  thought  and  extension,  subject 
and  object,  are  not  co-ordinate,  but  that  the  former 
always  '  overlaps  '  the  latter.  Accordingly  we  find  Green 
characterising  God  as  the  '  eternal  Self '  or  '  Self-conscious- 
ness,' and  many  Hegelians  professing  Theism  or  the  doc- 
trine of  divine  personality.  Mr  Caird,  for  example, 
holds  that  on  the  basis  of  Absolute  Idealism  "we  can 
think  of  God  —  as  he  must  be  thought  of  —  as  the 
principle  of  unity  in  all  things,  and  yet  conceive  him 
as  a  self-conscious,  self-determining  Being."  l 

But  it  is  a  tolerably  obvious  deduction  from  Absolute 

1  Evolution  of  Religion,  vol.  ii.  p.  82. 


438  Metaphysical  Implications 

Idealism  that  if  God  be  Subject,  his  absoluteness  pre- 
cludes the  existence  of  any  other  subjects  or  any  relation 
between  him  and  them.  Accordingly  the  finite  subject  is 
regarded  by  Green  as  the  "  reproduction  in  time  "  of  the 
one  eternal  Self.  Mr  Caird  also  maintains  explicitly  the 
entire  immanence  of  God  in  man  as  well  as  in  nature, 
and  the  resulting  unity  of  God  and  man.  To  deny  that 
identity,  he  insists,  is  to  rest  in  an  external  view  of  the 
universe,  to  stop  short  of  the  divine  unity.  The  imman- 
ence of  God  precludes  his  transcendence ;  his  unity  with 
man,  as  well  as  with  nature,  makes  impossible  that  separ- 
ateness  of  being,  whether  in  him  or  in  ourselves,  whicli 
we  are  accustomed  to  call  personality.  "  It  is  equally 
impossible  for  us  to  recall  or  to  maintain  the  attitude  of 
mind  of  the  pure  monotheists,  for  whom  God  was  merely 
one  subject  among  other  subjects ;  and  though  lifted  high 
above  them,  the  source  of  all  their  life,  was  yet  related 
to  them  as  an  external  and  independent  will.  Our  idea 
of  God  will  not  let  us  conceive  of  him  as  external  to 
anything,  least  of  all  to  the  spirits  who  are  made  in  his 
image,  and  who  live  and  move  and  have  their  being  in 
him.  We  cannot,  therefore,  avoid  thinking  of  God  as  a 
principle  who  is  within  us  as  he  is  without  us,  present  in 
self-consciousness  as  in  consciousness,  the  presupposition, 
the  life,  and  the  end  of  all."1  On  the  theory  of  Absolute 
Idealism,  on  the  other  hand,  "it  becomes  possible  to 
think  of  man  as  a  'partaker  in  the  divine  nature,'  and, 
therefore,  as  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  spirit, 
without  gifting  him  with  an  absolute  individuality  which 
would  cut  him  off  from  all  union  and  communion  with 
his  fellow-creatures  and  with  God."  2 

These  statements,  while  they  contain  most  important 
and  much- needed  truth,  also  reveal  the  nature  of  the 
reasoning  upon  which  the  central  position  of  Hegelian 
Idealism  rests.  That  position,  it  seems  to  me,  obtains 
its  chief  plausibility  by  pressing  into  the  service  of 

1  Op.  cit.,  vol.  ii.  p.  72.  2  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  84. 


The  Problem  of  God  439 

philosophic  thought  the  spatial  metaphor  which  under- 
lies such  terms  as  '  externality,'  '  relation,'  '  separation,' 
and  the  like.  Things  which  are  external  to  one  another, 
related  to  one  another,  separated  from  one  another  in 
space,  are  not  one  and  the  same,  but  manifold  and  dif- 
ferent. But  the  spatial  metaphor  must  not  blind  us  to 
the  fact  that,  in  investigating  the  relation  of  man  to  God, 
we  are  dealing  not  with  spatial  but  with  spiritual  exist- 
ence ;  and,  in  the  spiritual  sphere,  it  does  not  follow  that 
a  real  separateness  of  being,  a  real  relation  between  man 
and  God,  is  fatal  to  the  unity  of  the  terms  in  question. 
"  When  we  speak  of  God,  all  idols  of  space  and  time  must 
be  forgotten,  or  our  best  labour  is  in  vain." 1 

The  Hegelian  unification  is  too  easy ;  its  synthesis  of 
the  elements  of  reality,  human  and  divine,  is  too  rapid. 
Hegelianism  unifies  the  finite  subject  with  the  absolute 
or  divine  Subject  only  by  objectifying  the  subject,  that  is, 
by  confusing  the  subject  with  the  object.  But  it  is  the 
very  nature  of  the  subject  to  refuse  to  be  identified  with 
the  object,  of  the  ego  to  oppose  itself  for  ever  to  the 
non-ego.2  Hegel's  conception  of  God  is  the  result  of 
the  exclusive  intellectualism  of  his  view  of  the  universe. 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  intellect,  such  a  synthesis 
might  conceivably  be  satisfactory.  But  will  and  feeling 
are  factors  of  human  reality,  no  less  than  intellect;  and, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  will  and  feeling,  we  cannot 
unify,  in  the  sense  of  identifying,  man  with  God.  For 
the  Hegelian,  as  for  the  Spinozist,  the  process  of  the 
universe  is  one.  But  that  is  because  the  Hegelian  view 
is,  no  less  than  the  Spinozistic,  a  purely  intellectual 
view,  and  its  unity  is,  therefore,  the  unity  of  thought, 
not  the  unity  of  feeling  and  will.  The  process  of  thought 
might  conceivably  be  one  in  God  and  in  man;  the 
process  of  will  and  feeling  is  not  one.  It  is  the  very 
nature  of  will  to  separate,  to  substantiate,  if  also  to 

1  Herder,  quoted  by  Knight,  Aspects  of  Theism,  p.  161. 
-  Cf.  C.  F.  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  i.  ch.  v. 


440  Metaphysical  Implications 

relate,  its  possessors ;  and,  as  a  moral  being,  man  claims 
for  himself  a  moral  sphere  of  freedom  and  independent 
selfhood. 

It  is  this  inalienable  human  quality  of  freedom,  of 
independent  moral  initiation,  that  dictates  the  true  moral 
relation  of  man  to  God.  It  is  not  the  intellectual  burden 
of  finitude,  but  the  moral  burden  of  evil,  that  sends  man 
beyond  himself  to  God ;  and  the  moral  relation  of  man 
to  God  is,  in  its  essence,  a  personal  relation,  a  relation 
of  will.  "  Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  Thine."  If 
we  absolutely  unify  or  identify  God  and  man,  the  ethical 
attitude,  which  is  one  of  relation,  not  of  identity,  becomes 
impossible.  In  avoiding  the  evils  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
divine  transcendence,  Hegelianism  falls  into  the  no  less 
serious  evils  of  the  doctrine  of  the  mere  immanence  of 
God.  Morality  implies,  in  the  la,st  analysis,  a  relation 
between  man  and  God,  "  union  and  communion  of  the 
human  will  with  the  divine  Will " ;  not  such  a  unity  and 
identity  of  man  and  God  as  must  mean  the  dissolution  of 
all  relation  between  them.  It  is  the  spiritual  difference, 
or  separateness  of  being,  that  gives  the  union  its  entire 
moral  and  religious  significance ;  it  is  the  very  possibility 
of  saying  "  I  will "  that  gives  its  infinite  value  to  man's 
"  Not  my  will,  but  Thine,  be  done."  A  philosophy  which 
includes  the  life  of  man  in  the  one  divine  process  of 
the  universe,  and  makes  his  life,  like  nature's,  simply  a 
"  reproduction  "  of  the  life  of  God,  may  perhaps  be  intel- 
lectually satisfying,  but  it  cuts  away  the  roots  of  morality 
and  of  ethical  religion. 

The  greatest  strain  comes  upon  such  a  unitary  view 
when  it  meets  the  problem  of  evil.  Is  evil  an  element 
in  the  life  of  God  ?  If  so,  it  must  cease  to  be  real  evil ; 
and  this  is  precisely  Mr  Caird's  solution.  He  invokes  the 
sanction  of  Christianity  in  favour  of  such  a  thoroughly 
optimistic  interpretation  of  moral  evil.  The  characteristic 
truth  of  the  Christian  religion  he  takes  to  be  "  the  omni- 
potence of  good."  But,  if  goodness  is  to  be  perfectly 


The  Problem  of  God  441 

developed,  evil  must  be  struggled  with,  and  overcome. 
Goodness  is,  in  its  very  essence,  deliverance  from  evil ; 
and  "  with  the  increasing  pressure  of  the  conflict,  and 
the  growing  consciousness  of  the  evil  with  which  he 
has  to  contend,  there  comes  a  deepening  sense  of  the 
necessity  for  such  a  conflict  with  evil,  and  of  all  the 
suffering  it  brings  with  it,  to  the  highest  triumph  of 
good."1  Thus,  in  the  supreme  conflict  of  evil  with 
goodness,  "  even  the  powers  that  opposed  and  persecuted 
the  good  were  secretly  its  instruments,  and  even  the 
malice  and  hatred  of  men  were  no  real  hindrances,  but 
rather  the  opportunities  required  for  its  manifestation."2 
"Nay,  even  sin  itself,  as  its  utmost  power  is  shown  only 
under  the  Law — which  produces  a  distinct  consciousness 
of  sin,  and  so  prepares  the  way  for  the  negation  of  it  and 
for  the  reception  of  a  new  principle  of  life — even  sin 
itself,  from  this  point  of  view,  is  shown  to  form  part  of 
the  divine  order."  3  "  The  intensification  of  sin,  due  to 
the  consciousness  of  it  awakened  by  the  law,"  works  out 
the  greater  triumph  of  the  good.  For  while  "  sin  is  not 
sin  in  the  deepest  sense  till  it  is  conscious,  the  sin  of 
one  who  knows  the  divine  law  he  breaks ;  yet  just  this 
very  consciousness,  while  in  one  way  it  deepens  the  sin, 
in  another  way  prepares  for  its  extinction."  * 

This  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  seems  again  too 
rapid  and  easy.  I  cannot  see  how,  on  the  unitary  theory, 
evil  is  a  necessary  phase  of  the  process  of  the  good; 
how,  in  such  a  universe  as  Mr  Caird's,  the  evil  which 
is  an  indubitable  fact  of  moral  experience,  should  occur ; 
how  human  sin  can  be  a  part  or  stage  of  the  necessary 
process  of  the  divine  life;  how  this  unreason  should 
infect  a  universe  which  is  rational  through  and  through, 
The  explanation  offered  may  be  satisfactory,  as  an  ex- 
planation of  how  the  knowledge  of  evil  is  instrumental 
to  the  life  of  goodness ;  but  it  is  not  satisfactory  as  an 

1  Evolution  of  Religion,  vol.  ii.  p.  138.  a  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  165. 

3  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.  p.  207.  *  H>id->  vo1-  "•  P-  208- 


442  Metaphysical  Implications 

explanation  of  the  existence  of  evil,  it  does  not  justify  the 
occurrence  of  evil  as  a  real  fact  in  the  universe.  We  can 
see  how  evil,  once  there,  is  utilised  and  converted  into 
an  instrument  of  goodness  ;  but  why  evil  should  be  there 
at  all,  we  do  not  see.  Even  if  we  grant  the  necessity  of 
evil  as  affording  an  opportunity  for  the  choice  of  the 
good,  still  the  existence  of  evil,  that  is,  the  fact  that  the 
good  is  not  chosen,  is  left  out  of  the  explanation.  In 
every  case  of  moral  evil,  we  have  such  a  misdirection 
of  the  will.  To  make  evil  only  a  necessary  element  in 
the  life  of  goodness  seems  to  me  to  imperil,  if  not  to 
destroy,  the  reality  of  the  moral  life,  both  on  its  good  and 
on  its  evil  side.  The  earnestness  of  that  life,  whether 
in  its  bitterness  or  in  its  joy,  finds  no  adequate  interpre- 
tation in  a  theory  which  makes  it,  in  all  its  parts  and 
phases,  absolutely  and  simply  necessary. 

The  true  Absolute  must  contain,  instead  of  abolishing, 
relations ;  the  true  monism  must  include,  instead  of  ex- 
cluding, pluralism.  A  One  which,  like  Spinoza's  Sub- 
stance or  the  Hegelian  Absolute,  does  not  enable  us  to 
think  the  many,  cannot  be  the  true  One,  the  unity  of  the 
manifold.  The  one  Subject  which  negates  all  subjects 
is  hardly  better  than  the  one  Substance  which  negates 
all  substances.  The  true  unity  must  be  ethical,  as  well 
as  intellectual ;  and  an  ethical  unity  implies  distinct- 
ness of  being  and  of  activity.  To  deify  man  is  as  illegiti- 
mate as  to  naturalise  him.  But  morality  is  the  medium 
of  union,  as  well  as  of  separation,  between  man  and  God ; 
will  unites,  as  well  as  separates,  its  possessors.  "  Barriers 
exist  only  for  the  world  of  bodies ;  it  is  the  privilege  of 
minds  to  penetrate  each  other,  without  confusion  with 
one  another.  In  communion  with  God,  we  are  one  with 
him,  and  yet  we  maintain  our  personality." x  The  very 
surrender  of  the  finite  will  to  the  infinite  is  itself  an  act 
of  will ;  neither  morality  nor  ethical  religion  is  self-less 
or  impersonal. 

1  Ricardou,  De  I'ldtal,  p.  143. 


The  Problem  of  God  443 

1 2.  Intellectualism  and  moralism  :  reason  and  will. 
— Hegelianism,  we  have  seen,  finds  it  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  establishment  of  an  intelligible  theory  of  the 
universe,  that  God  be  conceived  in  terms  of  the  subject, 
rather  than  in  terms  of  the  object ;  it  is,  to  this  extent, 
anthropomorphic.  But  if  we  are  to  find  the  key  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  Absolute  in  the  subject  rather  than 
in  the  object,  with  what  right  do  we  exclude  the  ethical 
and  emotional  elements  of  the  subject's  life,  and  retain 
only  the  intellectual  ?  Intellectualism,  gnosticism,  or 
pure  rationalism  must  always  prove  itself  an  inadequate 
exposition  of  a  universe  which  includes  the  human  sub- 
ject, and  must  continue  to  call  forth  moralism  or  the 
philosophy  of  will  and  emotion,  as  its  needed  complement. 
A  metaphysical  scheme  which  invalidates  our  judgments 
of  moral  value  by  refusing  to  them  objective  significance 
is  no  less  inadequate  than  a  metaphysic  which  invalidates 
our  intellectual  or  our  aesthetic  judgments.  The  good 
must  find  its  place,  beside  the  true  and  the  beautiful,  in 
our  metaphysical  system.  And  if,  as  an  intellectual 
being,  man  might  resolve  himself  into  unity  with  God, 
and  regard  himself  as  a  mere  mode  or  aspect  of  the  one 
Subject,  a  moral  being  must  round  itself  to  a  separate 
whole.  The  reality  of  the  moral  life  implies  man's 
independence  of  God  as  well  as  of  nature,  and  forces 
upon  him,  to  that  extent,  a  pluralistic  rather  than  a 
monistic  view  of  the  universe. 

And  if  a  moral  theology  is  no  less  legitimate  than  an 
intellectual  theology,  it  follows  that  we  may  interpret 
God  not  merely  as  thought,  but  as  will  It  was  with 
a  true  insight  that  Aristotle  and  the  Schoolmen  thought 
of  God  as  '  pure  activity.'  Im  Anfang  war  die  That 
is  as  true  as  Im  Anfang  war  das  Wort.  But  we  can 
no  more  separate  will  from  intelligence  than  intelligence 
from  will.  Will,  separated  from  intelligence,  would  not 
be  will.  What  Schopenhauer  calls  '  will '  is  only  blind 
brute  force ;  its  activity  is  necessarily  disastrous,  and 


444  Metaphysical  Implications 

what  it  does  has  to  be  undone  when  intelligence  is  born. 
Aristotle's  ultimate  reality,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the 
unity  o*f  intelligence  and  will ;  the  divine  life  is  for  him 
identical  in  its  essence  with  the  ideal  life  of  man,  rational 
activity.1  Perfection  of  will  implies  perfection  of  intelli- 
gence, and  perfection  of  intelligence  and  will  implies  also 
emotional  perfection.  In  us,  it  is  true,  "  feeling,  thought, 
and  volition  have  all  defects  which  suggest  something 
higher." 2  But  the  "  something  higher  "  which  these  de- 
fects suggest  is  something  higher  in  the  same  kind,  the 
perfection  of  these  elements,  their  harmonious  unity.  To 
think  of  God  as  perfect  Personality,  to  conceive  the  divine- 
life  as  the  harmonious  activity  of  perfect  will  informed 
by  perfect  intelligence,  and  manifested  in  the  feeling  of 
this  harmony,  is  to  conceive  God  as  like  ourselves,  but 
with  our  human  limitations  removed,  and  to  conceive  our 
relation  to  God  as  a  moral  and  emotional,  and  not  merely 
as  an  intellectual,  relation. 

If,  therefore,  we  are  to  maintain  a  spiritual,  and  more 
particularly  an  ethical,  view  of  the  universe,  we  must  be 
in  earnest  with  the  conception  of  personality.  Hegelian- 
ism  is  altogether  too  vague  in  its  utterances  here.  Accord- 
ing to  the  latest  exposition  of  this  philosophy,  that  of  Mi- 
Bradley,  God  is  to  be  conceived  as  "  super-personal  "  rather 
than  as  "  impersonal."  "  It  is  better  to  affirm  personality 
than  to  call  the  Absolute  impersonal.  But  neither  mis- 
take should  be  necessary.  The  Absolute  stands  above, 
and  not  below,  its  internal  distinctions.  It  does  not  reject 
them,  but  it  includes  them  as  elements  in  its  fulness. 
To  speak  in  concrete  language,  it  is  not  the  indifference 
but  the  concrete  identity  of  all  extremes.  But  it  is  better 
in  this  connection  to  call  it  super-personal."  3  Yet  Mr 
Bradley  closes  his  book  with  the  statement  that,  accord- 
ing to  "  the  essential  message  of  Hegel,  outside  of  spirit 

1  By  Aristotle,  of  course,  this  activity  is  apt  to  be  conceived  as  an 
activity  of  the  pure  intellect. 

2  F.  H.  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  182.  s  Ibid.,  p.  533. 


The  Problem  of  God  445 

there  is  not,  and  there  cannot  be,  any  reality,  and  the 
more  anything  is  spiritual,  so  much  the  more  is  it  verit- 
ably real."1  But  is  not  spirit  essentially  personal,  and 
must  we  not  think  of  the  infinite  Spirit  rather  as  complete 
personality  than  as  super-personal  ? 

It  is  objected  that  to  conceive  God  as  personality  is  to 
contradict  his  infinity.  "  The  Deity  which  they  want  is 
of  course  finite, — a  person  much  like  themselves,  with 
thoughts  and  feelings  limited  and  mutable  in  the  process 
of  time.  ...  Of  course  for  us  to  ask  seriously  if  the 
Absolute  can  be  personal  in  such  a  way  would  be  quite 
absurd."  2  "  For  me  a  person  is  finite  or  is  meaningless."3 
"  Once  give  up  your  finite  and  mutable  person,  and  you 
have  parted  with  everything  which,  for  you,  makes  per- 
sonality important.  .  .  .  For  me  it  is  sufficient  to  know, 
on  one  side,  that  the  Absolute  is  not  a  finite  person. 
Whether,  on  the  other  side,  personality  in  some  eviscer- 
ated remnant  of  sense  can  be  applied  to  it,  is  a  question 
intellectually  unimportant  and  practically  trifling."4  Such 
statements  as  these — and  they  are  typical  of  the  criticism 
constantly  made  upon  ethical  Theism — seem  to  me  to  rest 
upon  the  ambiguity  of  the  term  '  personality.'  When  we 
think  of  personality  as  essentially  finite,  we  are  con- 
founding personality  with  individuality.  The  individual 
is  essentially  finite,  the  person  is  essentially  infinite.  So 
far  is  personality  from  contradicting  the  infinite,  that,  as 
Lotze  says,5  "  only  the  Infinite  is  completely  personal" 
If  we  think  of  God  as  being  all  that  we  ought  to  be,  as 
the  Eeality  of  the  moral  ideal,  must  we  not  say  that,  as 
we  gradually  constitute  our  personality,  we  are  tracing 
the  divine  image  in  ourselves,  and  learning  more  fully 
the  very  nature  of  God  ?  "  The  Absolute  is  not  a  finite 
person ; "  but  to  say  that  personality  is  necessarily  finite, 
"  with  thoughts  and  feelings  limited  and  mutable  in  the 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  552.  z  Ibid.,  p.  532. 

3  Loc.  tit.  *  Ibid.,  p.  533. 

8  Philosophy  of  Religion,  ch.  iv.  §  41. 


446  Metaphysical  Implications 

process  of  time,"  is  to  beg  the  whole  question  at  issue. 
The  question  is  whether  the  '  infinite '  and  the  '  personal ' 
are,  or  are  not,  contradictory  conceptions. 

The  essentially  unethical  character  of  an  impersonal  or 
super-personal  universe  is  finely  suggested  by  Professor 
lioyce  in  a  little  fable  of  his  own  invention :  "  And  so  at 
worst  we  are  like  a  child  who  has  come  to  the  palace  of 
the  king  on  the  day  of  his  wedding,  bearing  roses  as  a 
gift  to  grace  the  feast.  For  the  child,  waiting  innocently 
to  see  whether  the  king  will  not  appear  and  praise  the 
welcome  flowers,  grows  at  last  weary  with  watching  all 
day  and  with  listening  to  harsh  words  outside  the  palace 
gate  amid  the  jostling  crowd.  And  so  in  the  evening  it 
falls  asleep  beneath  the  great  dark  walls,  unseen  and  for- 
gotten ;  and  the  withering  roses  by  and  by  fall  from  its 
lap,  and  are  scattered  by  the  wind  into  the  dusty  highway, 
there  to  be  trodden  under  foot  and  destroyed.  Yet  all  that 
happens  only  because  there  are  infinitely  fairer  treasures 
within  the  palace  than  the  ignorant  child  could  bring. 
The  king  knows  of  this — yes,  and  of  ten  thousand  other 
proffered  gifts  of  loyal  subjects.  But  he  needs  them  not. 
Eather  are  all  things  from  eternity  his  own."  ]  Nay, 
but  to  the  very  palace  of  the  king  every  child  of  man 
can  bring  a  gift  and  treasure  which  he  will  not  despise 
— the  priceless  gift  of  a  free  and  loving  service,  the 
treasure,  more  precious  than  all  besides,  of  a  will  touched 
to  goodness.  We  cannot  believe  that  man's  good  and  evil 
are  indifferent  to  God,  that  evil  is  only  "  an  element,  and 
a  necessary  element,  in  the  total  goodness  of  the  Universal 
Will,"  that  in  God  our  "  separateness  is  destroyed,"  and, 
with  our  separateness,  our  sin,  that  our  goodness  follows, 
like  our  sin,  from  the  necessity  of  the  divine  nature.  In 
our  good,  as  in  our  evil,  we  feel  that  our  life  is  our  own, 
personal,  separate  from  God  as  it  is  separate  from  nature, 
OUT  own — to  give  to  him  who  gave  it  to  us,  or  to  with- 
hold even  from  him. 

1  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  483. 


The  Problem  of  God  447 

Instead  of  surrendering  the  idea  of  personality,  we  must, 
therefore,  cherish  it  as  the  only  key  to  the  moral  and 
religious  life.  It  is  the  hard-won  result  of  long  experi- 
ence and  deep  reflection.  The  depth  and  spirituality  of 
the  conception  of  God  have  grown  with  the  growth  of  the 
idea  of  human  personality.  It  is  the  presence  and  opera- 
tion of  this  idea  that  distinguishes  Christianity  from  other 
religions,  that  makes  Hebraism  a  religion,  while  the  lack 
of  it  makes  Hellenism  hardly  more  than  a  mythology. 
As  man  has  learned  to  know  himself,  he  has  advanced  in 
the  knowledge  of  God.  Our  age  is  the  age  of  science,  its 
prevailing  spirit  is  what  we  may  call  the  intellectualism 
of  the  scientific  mind.  Its  ambition  is  to  understand,  and 
to  understand  nature.  As  in  the  earliest  age  of  Greek 
philosophy,  the  eye  of  thought  is  directed  outward.  The 
task  is  a  great  one ;  no  wonder  that  the  energies  of  the 
time  are  wellnigh  exhausted  by  it.  But,  sooner  or  later, 
the  view  must  be  turned  again  inwards,  and,  when  it  is, 
the  eternal  spiritual  realities  will  be  found  there  still,  and 
the  lessons  which  were  not  written  upon  the  face  of  nature 
will  be  found  graven  on  the  living  tablets  of  the  human 
heart.  Man  is  not  all  intellect;  and  if  intellect  now 
thrives  at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  his  nature,  as  in  the 
Middle  Ages -intellect  was  itself  in  large  measure  starved 
and  sacrificed  that  morality  and  religion  might  develop, 
it  only  means  that  the  education  of  the  human  race  is 
conducted,  like  the  education  of  the  individual,*  bit  by  bit, 
step  by  step.  But  the  education  cannot  stop  until,  in 
insight  as  in  life,  humanity  has  attained  the  measure  of 
its  divine  perfection. 


448  Metaphysical  Implications 


LITERATURE. 

Kant,  Critique  of  Practical  Reason  (Abbott's  trans.),  bk.  ii. 
T.  H.  Green,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  bk.  i. 
J.  Caird,  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion. 
E.  Caird,  The  Evolution  of  Religion,  esp.  vol.  i.  Lectures  i.  -vii. 
J.  Royce,  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy. 
T.  H.  Huxley,  Evolution  and  Ethics. 
H.  Sidgwick,  Methods  of  Ethics,  concluding  chapter. 
J.  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion,  bks.  ii.,  iii.,  ch.  i. 
A.  C.  Fraser,  Philosophy  of  Theism. 
R.  Flint,  Theism  ;  Anti-Theistic  Theories. 
0.  Pfl eiderer,  Philosophy  and  Development  of  Religion,  vol.  i. 
J.  G.  Schurman,  Belief  in  God. 
J.  Fiske,  The  Idea  of  God. 

W.  James,  The  Will  to  Believe,  and  Other  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy. 
J.  Upton,  The  Bases  of  Religious  Belief. 
C.  F.  D'Arcy,  A  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  part  i.  chs.  ii.,  iv.,  v. 
A.  Seth,  Two  Lectures  on  Theism ;  Hegelianism  and  Personality ;  Man't 
Place  in  the  Cosmos,  and  Other  Essays,  esp.  pp.  1-33,  129-225. 


449 


CHAPTEE   III. 

THE    PROBLEM    OF    IMMORTALITY. 

1.  The  alternatives  of  thought. — The  third  postulate 
of  morality,  according  to  Kant,  is  the  immortality  of  the 
moral  being.  If  we  have  found  it  impossible  to  demon- 
strate the  freedom  of  the  will  and  the  existence  of  God, 
as  the  term  '  demonstration '  is  used  in  the  exact  sciences, 
we  need  not  hope  to  succeed  in  demonstrating  immor- 
tality. All  that  we  need  attempt  is  to  understand  the 
bearing  of  our  view  of  man's  nature  and  life  upon  the 
question  of  his  destiny.  For  the  problem  of  the  ultimate 
issues  of  the  moral  life  is  as  inevitable  as  the  problems 
of  its  origin  and  of  its  relation  to  the  universal  Reality ; 
nor  can  the  first  question  be  separated  from  the  other 
two.  And  if,  in  a  sense,  morality  may  be  said  to  depend 
upon  immortality,  in  another  sense  and,  in  Aristotle's 
phrase, '  for  us,'  immortality  must  be  said  to  depend  upon 
morality.  Our  answer  to  the  question,  What  is  the 
destiny  of  man  ?  must  depend  upon  our  answer  to  the 
previous  questions,  What  is  man  ?  and,  What  is  his 
proper  life  as  man  ?  Our  answer  to  the  question  whether 
the  moral  life  points  to  immortality  as  the  destiny  of  the 
moral  being,  depends  upon  our  interpretation  of  morality. 
And  ultimately  destiny,  like  life,  must  depend  upon  the 
nature  of  the  being  whose  life  and  destiny  we  are  con- 
sidering. Hence  it  is  that  we  do  not  generally  find  the 
problem  of  immortality  discussed  with  anything  like  the 

2  F 


450  Metaphysical  Implications 

same  fulness  or  explicitness  as  the  other  problems  we 
have  been  considering.  The  answer  to  this  question 
is  contained  in  the  answers  to  the  others ;  the  position 
taken  here  is  a  corollary  or  deduction  from  the  positions 
already  taken  on  the  nature  of  the  moral  being  and  the 
consequent  nature  of  the  moral  ideal.  Two  main  lines 
divide  philosophical  opinion.  The  affirmation  or  denial 
of  immortality  follows  in  the  first  place  from  the  accept- 
ance, respectively,  of  an  idealistic  and  transcendental,  or 
of  a  merely  naturalistic  and  empirical,  interpretation 
of  morality.  If  man  is  a  merely  natural  being,  nature's 
destiny  must  be  his  also ;  if  the  ideal  of  his  life  does  not 
transcend  his  present  experience,  the  present  life  must  be 
his  all-in-all.  But,  in  the  second  place,  the  affirmation 
or  denial  of  immortality  follows  from  the  acceptance  or 
the  rejection  of  personality  as  the  key  to  the  interpreta- 
tion of  man's  nature  and  life.  Pantheism  has  not,  any 
more  than  Naturalism,  a  place  for  personal  immortality, 
because  it  has  no  place  for  personality.  In  Spinozistic 
Pantheism  and  Hegelian  Idealism,  as  truly  as  in  Humian 
Sensationalism,  there  is  no  survival  of  the  self,  because 
there  is  no  self  to  survive.  Let  us  glance  in  turn  at 
these  alternatives  of  thought :  our  own  position  has  been 
sufficiently  foreshadowed  in  the  preceding  discussion. 

2.  Immortality  as  the  implication  of  morality. — 
The  implication  of  immortality  in  a  transcendental  view 
of  the  moral  life  is  most  explicitly  stated  by  Kant. 
The  '  thou  shalt '  of  moral  law  implies  '  thou  canst/  and 
an  infinite  '  thou  shalt '  implies  an  infinite  ability  to  ful- 
fil it.  But  an  infinite  moral  ideal  cannot  be  realised  in 
finite  time ;  it  follows  that  man,  as  the  subject  of  such 
an  ideal,  must  have  infinite  time  for  the  task  of  its  reali- 
sation. A  man  is  immortal  till  his  work  is  done,  and  the 
work  of  man  as  a  moral  being  is  never  done.1  It  is  true 
that  Kant  states  this  argument  in  the  negative  form  re- 

1  Cf.  Caird,  Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant,  bk.  ii.  ch.  v. 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  451 

quired  by  his  ethical  theory.  The  moral  ideal  is  for  him 
a  life  of  pure  reason,  from  which  the  surd  of  sensibility 
has  been  eliminated ;  and  it  is  the  eternal  presence  of 
this  fatal  surd  that  constitutes  the  Kantian  argument  for 
immortality.  The  moral  task  is  not  accomplished  till  the 
surd  has  disappeared,  but  it  never  disappears  from  the 
life  of  man,  mixed  as  his  nature  is  of  reason  and  sen- 
sibility ;  therefore  the  task  must  always  remain,  and, 
with  the  task,  the  possibility  of  its  accomplishment. 
The  essence  of  the  argument,  however,  is  independent  of 
this  particular  view  of  the  ethical  life ;  and  Kant's  own 
deeper  argument  for  immortality  we  might  consistently 
accept.  Kant's  real  deduction  of  immortality  is  from  the 
transcendental  source  and  significance  of  the  moral  ideal. 
Faithfulness  to  the  true  self  means  that  we  live  as  if  we 
were  immortal;  in  the  moral  life  we  constitute  ourselves 
heirs  of  immortality,  by  living  the  life  of  immortal 
or  eternal  beings.  Man's  true  life  is  not,  like  the  ani- 
mal's, a  life  in  time ;  its  law  issues  from  a  world  beyond 
"  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place,"  from  a  sphere  "  where 
time  and  space  are  not."  In  every  moral  act,  therefore, 
man  transcends  the  limits  of  the  present  life,  and  be- 
comes already  a  citizen  of  the  eternal  world.  He  has 
not  to  wait  for  his  immortality ;  it  broods  over  him  even 
in  the  present,  it  is  the  very  atmosphere  of  his  life  as 
a  moral  being. 

This  is  an  argument  as  old  as  Plato  and  Aristotle ;  it 
is  the  real  argument  for  immortality.  Man  is,  as  such, 
an  eternal  being ;  he  not  only  can,  but  must,  transcend 
time  in  every  act  of  his  moral  life.  The  law  of  his  life 
comes  from  that  higher  sphere  to  which,  in  his  essential 
being,  he  belongs.  Is  he  called  to  an  illusory  task — to 
live  as  an  immortal  while  in  reality  he  is  only  mortal ; 
to  conduct  himself  as  a  citizen  of  eternity,  while  in  reality 
he  is  only  a  denizen  of  time  ?  The  strenuous  and  ideal- 
istic moral  temper  is  rooted  in  the  conviction  of  the 
eternal  meaning  of  this  life  in  time,  and  is  willing  to 


452  Metaphysical  Implications 

stake  everything  on  this  great  Peradventure.  Nay,  it  is 
not  to  it  a  Peradventure,  but  a  silent  certainty,  under 
whose  constraining  power  considerations  of  time  are 
scorned  as  mere  irrelevancies.  Such  a  life  -Browning 
has  pictured  in  his  Grammarian's  Funeral.  He  has 
chosen  the  scholar's  devotion  to  his  ideal ;  but  that  is 
only  a  type  of  what  the  good  life  always  is — a  life  '  not 
for  the  day,  but  for  the  day  to  come,'  a  life  that  knows 
it  has  the  leisure  of  eternity  for  the  execution  of  its 
eternal  task.1 

There  is  surely  a  great  ethical  truth,  if  only  one  side 
of  the  truth,  in  the  Platonic  and  Mystic,  the  Medieval 
and  the  Kantian,  view  of  time  as  the  antechamber  to 
eternity,  of  this  life  as  a  pilgrimage,  a  place  of  tabernac- 
ling, an  inn  where  we  abide  for  a  night,  to  go  further  on 
the  morrow — nay,  even  as  the  prison-house  of  the  eternal 
spirit,  from  which  it  must  take  its  flight  to  its  home  in 
the  unseen  and  eternal  world  whence  it  came  and  where 
its  real  interests  and  concerns  are.  Everything  perishes 
with  the  using,  everything  but  man,  the  spectator  of 
the  universal  change  and  passing  away,  who  feels  amid 
it  all  that  he  is  living  a  life  which  has  no  essential  re- 
lation to  change  or  death,  a  life  which  these  things  do 
not  touch.  For  is  he  not  building,  in  the  eternal  world 
of  his  own  spirit,  a  '  house  not  made  with  hands,'  that 
house  of  character  which  no  storms  of  time  can  reach, 
or  move  from  its  foundation  ? 


1  "  Others  mistrust  and  say,  '  But  time  escapes  1 

Live  now  or  never  1 ' 
He  said,  'What's  time?   Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes, 

Man  has  Forever ! ' 
Was  it  not  great?  did  not  he  throw  on  God 

(He  loves  tho  burthen  !) — 
God's  task  to  make  the  heavenly  period 

Perfect  the.  earthen  ?  " 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  two  great  poets  of  our  time,  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  have  been  equally  fascinated  by  this  problem,  and  have  dealt 
with  it  so  philosophically  that  quotations  might  be  multiplied  almost  in- 
definitely from  their  poems,  especially  those  of  Browning. 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  453 

"  Sweet  spring,  full  of  sweet  days  and  roses, 
A  box  whose  sweets  compacted  lie, 
My  music  shows  ye  have  your  closes, 

And  all  must  die. 
Only  a  sweet  and  virtuous  soul 
Like  seasoned  timber  never  gives  ; 
But  though  the  whole  world  turn  to  coal, 
Then  chiefly  lives." 

The  refusal  of  man  to  accept  time  as  the  measure  of 
his  life's  possibility  manifests  itself  in  the  essentially 
prophetic  nature  of  the  moral  consciousness.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  progress,  the  distinctive  attribute  of  human 
life.  The  present  life,  man  feels  to  the  end,  is  a  probation, 
a  school  where  his  spirit  is  learning  lessons  which  will 
serve  it  after  it  has  passed  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
school.  "  No  end  of  learning,"  and  no  time  here  to  put 
the  lessons  into  execution.  Can  it  be  that  just  when  we 
have  learned  our  lesson  best,  when  we  have  best  mastered 
the  "  proper  craft "  of  living,  the  tool  is  dashed  from  our 
hands,  the  activity  for  which  we  have  been  preparing  is 
shut  against  us  ;  that  just  when,  through  the  illumination 
of  life's  experience,  the  true  meaning  of  life  becomes  most 
clearly  visible,  that  insight  will  prove  futile  ? 

"  We  spend  our  lives  in  learning  pilotage, 
And  grow  good  steersmen  when  the  vessel's  crank  ! " 

Shall  we  not  be  promoted  to  a  nobler  craft,  when  at 
last  we  have  mastered  something  of  the  currents  of 
"  that  immortal  sea  "  ?  There  is  no  fruition  and  fulfil- 
ment, no  perfect  realisation,  in  this  life,  of  this  life's 
purpose.  Life  is  a  preparation,  a  discipline,  an  educa- 
tion of  the  moral  being.  Is  all  this  elaborate  and 
painful  work  of  moral  education  to  be  undone  ?  Is 
death  the  consummation  of  our  life,  its  grand  catas- 
trophe and  ddnodment  ?  Were  not  this  failure  absolute 
and  supreme,  failure  at  the  heart  of  things  ?  Were  it 
not  as  if  the  universe  could  not  support  the  moral  life 
to  which  it  had  given  birth,  as  if  here  it  failed  and  could 


454  Metaphysical  Implications 

not  realise  its  own  end  ?  Against  such  a  contradiction 
between  man's  being  and  his  destiny,  between  the  magni- 
tude of  his  task  and  the  narrow  limits  set  to  its  execu- 
tion, our  moral  nature  rises  in  protest.  The  validity  of 
our  judgments  of  moral  value  implies  the  possibility  of 
the  fulfilment  by  the  moral  being  of  his  moral  task,  the 
permanence  of  the  results  of  moral  achievement.  If  we 
regard  man  as  a  merely  natural  being,  part  and  product 
of  nature,  we  can  well  believe  that  for  him  too  death  is 
the  end.  But  if  we  regard  him  as  for  ever  nature's 
superior,  as  made  in  the  divine  likeness  and  '  but  a 
little  lower  than  God/  we  cannot  think  of  him  as 
sharing  nature's  destiny.  "  Poor  man,  God  made,  and 
all  for  that ! "  Man's  very  greatness,  his  capacity 
fcr  thought  and  action,  and  for  ideals  that  always  put 
his  attainments  to  the  blush,  were  then  the  grimmest 
of  all  ironies,  contrived  to  mock  him  into  despair. 
"  What  a  piece  of  work  is  a  man !  How  noble  in 
reason !  how  infinite  in  faculties !  in  form  and  moving, 
how  express  and  admirable !  in  action,  how  like  an 
angel !  in  apprehension,  how  like  a  God !  the  beauty 
of  the  world !  the  paragon  of  animals !  And  yet,  to 
me,  what  is  this  quintessence  of  dust  ? "  *  The  shadow 
of  that  contradiction  would  lie  across  man's  life  in 
the  present,  and  darken  all  its  joy;  the  knowledge 
of  that  ultimate  failure  would  make  all  success  un- 
real. Well  might  we  wish  that  we  had  never  heard 
of  "those  ineffable  things  which,  if  they  may  not  make 
man's  happiness,  must  make  man's  woe," 2  that  we  had 
never  been  "  summoned  out  of  nothingness  into  illusion, 
and  evolved  but  to  aspire  and  to  decay ! "  8 

1  Hamlet,  Act  ii.  sc.  2. 

2  Myers,  Science  and  a  Future  Life,  p.  70. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  75.     Cf.  Thomas  Davidson,  "  Ethics  of  an  Eternal  Being " 
(International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  iii.  pp.  343,  344) :  "  Sense,  as  such,  has 
a  very  limited  range,  and  hence  its  correlate,  instinct,  can  be  satisfied  with 
very  finite  things.     Intellect,  on  the  contrary,  from  its  very  nature,  knows 
no  limits ;  and  hence  its  correlate,  will,  can  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  455 

The  question  of  immortality  is  the  question  of  the 
reality  or  illusoriness  of  the  moral  life.  It  is  only 
another  aspect  of  the  question  discussed  in  last  chapter, 
namely,  whether  "  morality  is  the  nature  of  things," 
whether  the  moral  ideal  has  its  correlate  in  universal 
reality.  Here,  once  more,  the  good  man  gives  hostages 
to  fortune,  and  casts  on  the  universe  the  burden  of 
completing  his  efforts  after  an  end  too  great  to  be 
attainable  in  the  present.  He  trusts  that  what  he  has 
done  will  not  be  undone  by  the  Universal  Power,  since 
he  believes  it  to  be  a  Power  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness. Were  it  not  so,  human  life  would  lose  its  meaning, 
and,  with  the  discovery  of  the  hollowness  of  its  make- 
believe,  all  earnestness  of  moral  purpose  would  be  ex- 
changed, in  an  earnest  nature,  for  cynicism  and  despair. 

3.  Personal  immortality. — But  it  is  denied  that 
personal  immortality  is  the  necessary  completion  of 
the  moral  life.  Our  attitude  to  this  question  must 
depend  upon  our  attitude  to  the  previous  question  of 
the  moral  ideal.  The  nature  of  the  ideal  life,  we  have 
found,  can  be  determined  only  by  a  consideration  of 
the  nature  of  the  being  whose  life  we  are  considering. 
Destiny  and  life,  therefore,  depend  ultimately  on  nature. 
And  the  view  which  we  have  been  led  to  adopt  is  that 
man  is,  in  his  deepest  nature,  a  person,  a  self,  whose 
total  being,  rational  and  sentient,  is  expressed  in  the 
activity  of  wilL  The  moral  ideal,  therefore,  we  have 
inferred,  is  an  ideal  of  character ;  the  typical  and  char- 
acteristic activity  of  man  is  self-realisation,  'realisation 
of  self  by  self.'  Man's  proper  business  is  in  the  inner 
world  of  his  own  being,  not  in  the  outer  world  of  material 
production.  Producer  and  product  are  here  one;  the 
moral  activity  is  an  end-in-itself ;  or,  if  it  has  a  further 

than  the  infinite.  If  that  infinite  were  unattainable,  man's  gifts  of  intelli- 
gence and  will  would  be  the  cruellest  of  mockeries,  and  human  life  the 
saddest  of  tragedies." 


456  Metaphysical  Implications 

end,  it  is  only  the  acquisition  of  a  higher  capacity  for 
such  activity.  "What  is  really  being  accomplished  in 
the  moral  life  is,  therefore,  always  an  invisible  and 
spiritual  result :  whatever  the  man  seems  to  be  doing 
or  making,  he  is  really  always  making  himself,  actualis- 
ing  the  potentiality  of  his  own  nature.  The  moral  ideal 
is  an  ideal  of  character,  and  this  personal  ideal  implies 
a  personal  destiny. 

The  problem  of  immortality  is  thus  the  old  Aristotel- 
ian problem  of  the  opportunity  of  the  moral  life.  We 
must  repeat,  though  in  a  somewhat  different  sense,  Aris- 
totle's demand  for  '  length  of  days '  as  the  condition  of 
a  complete  moral  life.  No  finite  increase  of  time  would 
suffice  for  the  accomplishment  of  an  infinite  task.  And 
the  moral  task  is,  we  have  concluded,  an  infinite  one ; 
the  capacity  of  the  self  which  we  are  called  upon  to 
realise  is  an  infinite  capacity.  The  reality  of  the  moral 
life  implies  the  possibility  of  attaining  its  ideal;  a  po- 
tentiality that  cannot  be  actualised  is  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  But  the  opportunity  is  not  given  in  this  life, 
however  well  and  wisely  this  life  is  used,  for  the  full 
activity  of  all  man's  powers,  intellectual,  aesthetic,  and 
volitional.  At  the  end  of  the  best  and  fullest  life,  must 
we  not  "  contrast  the  petty  Done,  the  Undone  vast "  ? 
And  even  if,  in  the  eye  of  the  world,  the  accomplishment 
seems  great  and  the  life  complete,  shall  not  the  worker 
himself  inscribe  upon  it  '  Unfinished '  ?  He  knows,  if 
others  know  not,  the  unrealised  potentiality  that  is  in 
him,  the  character  yet  unexpressed  and  waiting  for  its 
more  perfect  expression,  the  capacity  yet  unfulfilled  and 
waiting  for  its  fulfilment.  If  we  add  to  this  considera- 
tion of  the  universal  human  lack  of  moral  opportunity 
the  consideration  of  the  inequality  of  opportunity  in  the 
present,  and  the  sacrifice  which  many  make  of  the  oppor- 
tunity they  have,  that  they  may  enlarge  the  opportunity 
nf  others,  above  all,  if  we  think  that,  without  a  future 
life,  not  only  is  the  opportunity  of  further  moral  progress 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  457 

suddenly  and  for  ever  foreclosed,  but  the  work  already 
so  laboriously  done  is  all  undone,  the  fruits  of  moral 
experience,  so  carefully  gathered  and  garnered,  are  all 
wasted,  the  character  so  hardly  acquired  is  all  dissolved, 
and,  in  a  moment,  is  as  though  it  had  never  been, — are 
we  not  compelled,  in  the  interests  of  clear  and  coherent 
thought  about  the  meaning  of  our  life,  to  postulate  the 
immortality  of  our  moral  being?  Has  not  the  moral 
individual,  as  such,  a  claim  upon  the  universe  ?  Is  not 
this  the  axiom  of  his  life  ?  Would  not  annihilation 
mean  moral  contradiction  ? 

But,  it  is  said,  the  completion  of  the  work  of  the 
individual  is  in  the  larger  life  of  the  race ;  the  true  im- 
mortality is  not  personal,  but  '  corporate.'  The  race 
lives  on,  though  the  individual  passes  away ;  and  he 
ought  to  be  content  to  work  for  the  race,  rather  than 
for  himself.  Other  battles  will  be  fought,  and  other  vic- 
tories won.  He  has  played  his  part,  and  it  is  time  for 
him  to  make  his  exit;  why  should  he  linger  on  the 
stage  ?  The  individual  falls,  like  a  withered  leaf,  from 
the  tree  of  life ;  but  the  tree  itself  will  feel  the  renewing 
breath  of  spring.  It  is  through  the  constant  death  of 
the  individual  that,  to  the  race,  there  comes  a  continual 
resurrection.  As  for  the  individual,  he  ought  to  rest 
with  satisfaction  in  the  anticipation  of  that  moral  in- 
fluence which  he  bequeaths  to  his  successors,  and  to  find 
in  that  influence  his  real  immortality.  This  changed 
view  of  immortality,  it  is  insisted,  lends  life  a  new 
meaning.  "  The  good  we  strive  for  lives  no  longer  in  a 
world  of  dreams  on  the  other  side  of  the  grave ;  it  is 
brought  down  to  earth  and  waits  to  be  realised  by  human 
hands,  through  human  labour.  We  are  called  on  to 
forsake  the  finer  egoism  that  centred  all  its  care  on  self- 
salvation,  for  a  love  of  our  own  kind  that  shall  triumph 
over  death,  and  leave  its  impress  on  the  joy  of  genera- 
tions to  come." ] 

1  C.  M.  Williams,  A  Review  of  Evolutional  Ethics,  p.  580. 


458  Metaphysical  Implications 

In  answer  to  this,  I  would  remark  (l)  that  such  an 
argument  is  strictly  irrelevant  to  the  question  at  issue. 
Can  a  life  which,  throughout  its  course,  is  personal,  end 
by  becoming  impersonal,  or  by  passing  over  to  other 
persons  ?  The  question  is  whether  the  individual  has, 
in  these  brief  earthly  years,  lived  out  his  life,  and 
realised  his  total  good.  Moral  progress  is  progress  in 
character,  and  character  cannot  be  transferred.  If,  at 
death,  the  self  ceases  to  exist,  the  task  of  its  life  is 
ended — and  undone.  (2)  The  good  of  others  is,  like 
my  own,  a  personal  and  individual  good ;  and,  if  there 
is  no  permanent  good  for  me,  neither  is  there  for  them. 
Thus  the  good  of  others  to  which  we  had  wedded  our 
souls  is,  like  our  own,  destined  to  disintegration.  Has 
the  transition  from  the  individual  to  the  race  accom- 
plished what  it  promised,  namely,  the  substitution  of  an 
abiding  good  for  the  perishing  good  of  the  individual 
life  ?  The  answer  is,  Yes ;  the  permanence  of  the 
good  of  humanity  is  founded  in  the  unity  and  solid- 
arity of  the  race.  We  are  not  to  work  even  for 
other  individuals,  at  least  not  for  any  particular  in- 
dividual or  group  of  individuals,  but  for  the  race. 
This  forces  us  to  ask  (3)  whether  the  race  itself 
is  permanent  ?  The  writer  just  quoted  raises  this 
question,  and  answers :  "  The  question  as  to  the  final 
destruction  of  the  human  race,  whether  by  sudden 
catastrophe  or  slow  decay,  can  little  affect  happiness, 
at  present,  or  for  very  many  ages  to  come.  .  .  .  The 
pessimist  is  fond  of  making  much  of  the  final  end  of 
our  planet;  but  the  healthy  and  successful  will  be 
happy  in  spite  of  future  ages,  and  the  extent  and 
degree  of  happiness  will  continue  to  increase  for  such 
an  immense  period  of  time  that  there  is  no  reason 
for  considering  the  destruction  of  our  race  as  exerting 
any  important  influence  on  ethical  theory." x  But 
we  must  face  this  future,  and  think  our  way  through 

1  C.  M.  Williams,  loc.  tit. 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  459 

it,  to  the  darkness  and  nothingness  beyond.  "Would 
not  that  Beyond  turn  all  the  joy  of  the  present  to 
dust  and  ashes  in  our  grasp  ?  Or  must  we  cease  to 
think,  as  the  writer  seems  to  intimate  that  the  healthy 
and  successful  will  do  ?  That  we  cannot  do,  without 
being  false  to  our  highest  nature.  Is  this,  then,  the 
'  future  of  the  species/  for  which  we  are  to  work  ? 
All  this  progress,  progress — towards  nothing !  Surely, 
if  life  is  worth  living,  there  must  be  something  that 
does  not  suffer  shock  and  change.  But  nowhere  can 
that  something  be  found  save  in  the  spiritual  sphere, 
the  sphere  of  personality;  only  character  is  permanent, 
and  character  is  personal. 

The  Absolute  Idealist  will  still  refuse  to  entertain 
the  plea  for  individual  immortality,  on  the  ground 
that  eternity  belongs  to  thought,  not  to  the  individual 
thinker;  since,  truly  understood,  the  finite  self  is  not 
a  self  at  all,  but  must  be  resolved  either  into  the 
universal  Thinker  or  into  universal  Thought.  This 
raises  anew  the  questions  which  we  have  discussed 
in  more  than  one  connection  already:  (1)  whether 
we  can  conceive  of  thought  without  a  thinker ;  (2) 
whether,  admitting  the  necessity  of  a  subject  of 
thought,  we  must  not  admit  the  reality  of  the  finite 
subject;  and  (3)  whether,  in  the  moral  life,  if  not  in 
the  intellectual,  we  must  not  assert  the  relative  inde- 
pendence of  the  finite  self  —  the  active,  if  not  the 
intellectual,  independence  of  man.  Our  answers  to 
these  questions  about  the  ultimate  meaning  of  man's 
life  in  the  present  must  determine  our  answer  to  the 
question  about  his  future  destiny.  If  a  regard  for 
moral  reality  forbids  us  to  resolve  the  present  life  of 
man  into  the  life  of  God,  such  a  resolution  in  the 
future  must  be  no  less  illegitimate. 

The  idealistic  objection  to  the  immortality  of  the 
individual  seems  to  me  to  rest  upon  two  misunderstand- 
ings:  (1)  that  misinterpretation  of  individuality,  and  of 


4GO  Metaphysical  Implications 

finitude  in  general,  which  finds  expression  in  the  principle, 
Omnis  determinatio  negatio  est.  Spinoza,  subject  as  he  is 
in  large  measure  to  this  principle,  suggests  the  deeper 
truth,  namely,  that  the  finite,  instead  of  merely  negating, 
realises  the  infinite,  that  the  perseverare  in  esse  suo  of  the 
finite  is  also  the  '  perseverance  '  of  the  infinite  in  its  proper 
being.  And  we  have  found  that,  in  the  moral  life  as  we 
know  it,  the  finite  principle  of  individuality  does  not  con- 
tradict the  infinite  principle  of  personality.  Why,  in  the 
future  more  than  in  the  present,  should  the  one  contradict 
the  other  ?  (2)  The  objection  rests  upon  a  confusion  of 
moral  with  intellectual  unity  and  identity.  The  ethical 
unity,  which  consists  in  identity  of  will,  implies,  we  have 
seen,  a  real  independence  of  will ;  apart  from  such  inde- 
pendence, there  could  be  no  surrender  of  the  finite  will 
to  the  infinite.  The  maintenance  of  the  ethical  relation 
between  God  and  man  implies,  therefore,  the  persist- 
ence of  the  human  will  or  self,  in  the  future'  as  in  the 
present.  The  dissolution  of  this  would  mean  the  dis- 
solution of  the  ethical  life  itself,  and  the  grounds  on  which 
we  refuse  to  accept  this  have  already  been  sufficiently 
indicated. 

Our  origin  and  our  destiny  are  one ;  it  is  because  we 
come  from  God  that  we  must  go  to  him,  and  can  only 
rest  in  fellowship  with  him  who  is  the  Father  of  our 
spirits.  That  fellowship — the  fellowship  of  will  with 
Will — in  the  present  is  our  best  pledge  of  its  continuance 
in  the  future.  The  fellowship  with  the  Eternal  cannot 
but  be  eternal,  and  such  fellowship  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  moral  life.  God  is  the  Home  of  his  children's 
spirits,  and  he  would  not  be  God  if  he  banished  any 
from  his  presence ;  nor  would  man  be  man  if  he  could 
reconcile  himself  to  the  thought  of  such  an  exile. 


The  Problem  of  Immortality  461 


LITERATURE. 

Plato,  Phatdo,  Apology,  40-42  ;  JRepublic,  x.  608-621 ;  Mcno,  81 ;  Phadrus, 

245. 

Kant,  Critique  of  Practical  Reason  (Abbott's  trans.),  bk.  ii. 
Fiehte,  The  Vocation  of  Man,  bk.  iii.  (Smith's  trans,  of  Fichte's  Popular 

Works). 

J.  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion,  bk.  iv. 
A.  C.  Fraser,  Philosophy  of  Theism  (Gifford   Lectures),  Second  Series, 

Lecture  x. 

J.  Fiske,  The  Destiny  of  Man. 
G.  A.  Gordon,  Immortality  and  the  New  Theodicy. 


INDEX 


Abstinence,  244. 

Adams,  H.  C.,  quoted,  306. 

Addison,  quoted,  422  note. 

^Esthetics,  science  of,  26 ;  com- 
pared with  ethics,  37. 

^Estheticism  and  Hedonism,  85 ; 
ethical  inadequacy  of,  261. 

Agnosticism  and  ethics,  398 ;  re- 
ligion of,  401. 

Altruism,  of  modern  Hedonism,  22, 
96 ;  and  egoism,  210,  264 ; 
hedonistic  view  of,  criticised, 
129. 

Amiel,  referred  to,  61. 

Anarchism,  284,  290. 

Ancient  conception  of  moral  ideal 
compared  with  modern,  14,  16. 

Animal  activity  compared  with 
human,  44,  50. 

Anthropocentric  standpoint  of 
ethics,  33 ;  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, 430. 

Anthropomorphism,  430. 

Apperception,  Herbartian,  48, 
380  ;  Kantian,  203. 

Appreciative  sciences,  25. 

Aristippus,  83. 

Aristotle,  his  view  of  ethics,  its 
function  and  method,  1,  12,  24, 
37,  38,  153 ;  nfyahfyvxas,  13, 
264 ;  on  ethical  end,  15 ;  on 
virtue,  21,  39,  51,  56,  206, 
208  ;  Lesbian  rule,  31  ;  on  will, 
40  ;  on  efficient  cause,  70 ;  on 
final  cause,  72 ;  on  pleasure, 
64,  148,  210  ;  on  pleasure  and 
happiness,  113,  209;  on  ac- 


tivity, 143 ;  the  mean,  153, 
170,  225,  244;  Eudsemonism, 
224 ;  his  psychology,  226 ;  on 
soul  and  body,  226 ;  on  the 
intellectual  life,  189,  255,  261  ; 
on  friendship,  276,  279 ;  on 
mean-spiritedness,  279  ;  on  the 
State,  287,  324;  on  the  op- 
portunity of  virtue,  416 ;  his 
teleology,  431. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  4,  168, 
232,  234,  411 ;  referred  to,  250. 

Artist,  the,  256,  259. 

Asceticism,  147,  161,  167,  189, 
191,  207,  244,  348. 

Athenian  State,  339. 

Athleticism,  250. 

Attention,  47,  384. 

Attractiveness  of  morality,  15. 

Attuent,  51. 

Automaton  theory,  386. 

Autonomy,  moral,  205,  214,  427. 

Bain,  A.,  on  value  of  knowledge, 
119  note. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  on  pleasure  and 
choice,  64,  67  ;  on  feeling  and 
idea,  65. 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  on  the  method  of 
ethics,  28  note,  33  note,  36. 

Beatific  vision,  25o. 

Beautiful,  love  of  the,  255. 

Benevolence,  240,  273,  276,  296, 
304,  321 ;  its  relation  to  self- 
love,  22  ;  and  culture,  279. 

Bentham,  J.,  on  motives,  72,  73, 
140;  his  Hedonism,  96,  98; 


464 


Index 


on  the  sovereignty  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  136. 

Berkeley,  379. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  on  pleasure  and 
choice,  70,  71  ;  quoted,  202 
note,  392,  393,  394,  444. 

Browning,  quoted,  234,  452. 

Buddhism,  260. 

Butler,  his  view  of  the  relation  of 
ethics  to  psychology,  38 ;  on 
pleasure  and  choice,  64,  76  ;  on 
interest,  74  ;  his  theory  of  con- 
science, 171  ;  on  benevolence, 
175;  criticism  of,  176;  his 
Eudsemouism,  218 ;  on  selfish- 
ness, 263 ;  referred  to,  199, 
203. 

Byron,  85. 

Caird,  Edward,  on  the  ideal  and 
the  real,  426  ;  view  of  God, 
434  ;  on  moral  evil,  441. 

Calamity,  421. 

Caliban,  230. 

Capitalism,  285,  330. 

Carlyle,  229,  257  ;  quoted,  252 
note. 

Cave,  Plato's,  254,  256. 

Character,  and  nature,  49 ;  fixity 
of,  54  ;  hedonistic  view  of,  criti- 
cised, 141. 

Charity,  274,  332. 

Choice,  46 ;  dynamical  and  teleo- 
logical  aspects  of,  116. 

Christianity,  its  view  of  the  re- 
lation of  knowledge  to  life,  9  ; 
its  estimate  of  righteousness, 
16  ;  its  view  of  the  individual, 
17,  247,  327  ;  of  suffering,  148  ; 
and  asceticism,  161  ;  ethics  of, 
194;  its  view  of  service,  264; 
of  greatness,  264 ;  its  internal 
estimate  of  morality,  335  ;  its 
moral  influence,  340 ;  its  con- 
ception of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
345. 

Church,  the,  283,  346  ;  and  State, 
302,  328. 

Citizenship,  Greek,  16,  282,  334  ; 
of  the  world,  157  ;  ethical,  306. 

Clarke,  171. 

Clough,  A.  H.,  quoted,  234. 


Coercion,  political,  290. 
Common-sense  and  ethics,  36. 
Communism,  283,  298,  301. 
Comte,  402. 
Conduct,   what  is  meant   by,    4  ; 

hedonistic  view  of  its  relation 

to  character,   142. 
Conscience,    its    relation    to    the 

good,    20 ;     Stephen    on,    107 ; 

Butler's    theory    of,    172;     in- 
tuitional  view   of,    179 ;    reign 

of,  215. 

Conscientiousness,  215. 
Consumption,  304. 
Continuity,  of  moral  life,  53 ;  of 

mental  life,  380. 
Contract,  300. 

Controls,  Spencer's  theory  of,  102. 
Conversion,  57. 
Cosmic  process,  95,  406. 
Cosmocentric  view,  33,  430. 
Cosmopolitanism,    157,  283,    310, 

342,  347. 
Courage,  320. 
Crime,  312. 
Cud  worth,  171. 
Culture,  240,  247  ;  physical,  249  ; 

and    philanthropy,     262 ;     and 

benevolence,  279. 
Custom,  215. 

Cynics,  the,  145,  154,  311. 
Cynicism,  278. 
Cyrenaics,  the,  83,  190. 

D'Arcy,  C.  F.,  33  note,  439. 

Davidson,  T.,  454  note. 

Death,  Epicurean  view  of,  93. 

Deliberation,  46. 

Descriptive  sciences,  25. 

Desires,  Epicurean  classification 
of,  92. 

Despotism,  290. 

Determinism,  361. 

Dewey,  J.,  on  pleasure  and  desire, 
74  ;  on  pleasure  and  happiness, 
209  ;  referred  to,  7,  166. 

Dignity,  Mill's  sense  of,  100,  125. 

Distribution  of  the  good,  109. 

Dualism,  the  ethical,  188. 

Duty,  and  the  good,  14,  21  ; 
Spencer  on,  102 ;  hedonistic 
view  of,  136  ;  meaning  of,  212. 


Index 


465 


Ecclesiastes,  quoted,  87  ;  referred 
to,  229. 

Economics,  the  method  of,  26. 

Economy  of  will  power,  53. 

Education,  Greek,  255 ;  and  the 
State,  304,  305. 

Edwards,  J.,  368. 

Efficient  cause,  70. 

Effort,  51. 

Egoism,  of  ancient  Hedonism, 
96;  and  altruism,  104,  135, 
210,  253,  264. 

Eliot,  George,  55,  230,  263. 

Empiricism,  203,  375. 

End,  the  chief,  12. 

Enfranchisement,  social,  331. 

Environment,  moral,  273. 

Epicureanism,  88,  98,  326. 

Epicurus,  letter  of,  90. 

Equality,  273,  275. 

Equity,  300. 

Esau,  230. 

Ethical,  process,  and  cosmic,  95, 
406. 

Ethics,  problem  of,  1,  2,  5,  9,  11, 
12,  79  ;  relation  to  metaphys- 
ics, 24,  31,  353  ;  relation  to 
natural  science,  24  ;  method  of, 
24  ;  a  normative  science,  24  ; 
and  logic,  26,  37  ;  and  aesthet- 
ics, 26,  37. 

Eudaemonism,  79. 

Everett,  C.  C.,  quoted,  266. 

Evil,  moral,  214,  440. 

Evolution,  of  morality,  13,  28, 
318  ;  and  Hedonism,  95  ;  nat- 
ural, 430 ;  dialectical,  434. 

Evolutionism,  ethical,  28,  101, 
128,  406. 

Fact,  judgments  of,  25. 

Faculty,  moral,  20. 

Failure,  214. 

Faith,  moral,  9  ;  and  works,  329. 

Fallacy,  the  moralist's,  13. 

Family,  the,  283,  302,  324. 

Fanaticism,  moral,  217. 

Fate,  410. 

Fauns,  230. 

Faust,  55,  227. 

Feeling  and  will,  63. 

Feudalism,  330. 


Fichte,  206,  423. 

Final  cause,  72. 

Fiske,  J.,  quoted,  431,  432. 

Fixity  of  character,  54. 

Fortune,  92,  410. 

Fouillee,  quoted,  145,  367,  388. 

Fraternity,  240,  273. 

Freedom,  duty  of,  240,  273,  303 ; 
problem  of,  358,  360  ;  its  limit- 
ations, 370  ;  and  God,  440. 

Friendship,  276. 

Gizycki,  quoted,  142. 

God,  problem  of,  358,  398. 

Goethe,  quoted,  227,  265. 

Golden,  Age,  214,  259;  rule, 
97. 

Good,  the,  and  the  true,  10 ;  what, 
12  ;  and  duty,  14,  21,  29 ;  and 
right,  14,  19 ;  as  problem  of 
ethics,  18 ;  personal  character 
of,  18 ;  social  character  of,  18 ; 
and  law,  1 9 ;  and  conscience, 
20 ;  and  virtue,  20  ;  and  pleas- 
ure, 21 ;  and  altruism,  22  ;  and 
self-sacrifice,  23  ;  supremacy  of, 
260. 

Greatness,  moral,  264. 

Greek,  view  of  the  State,  16,  416  ; 
rationalism,  170;  intellectual- 
ism,  204  ;  temperance,  230 ; 
citizenship,  343 ;  contribution 
to  human  culture,  346. 

Green,  T.  H.,  on  pleasure  and 
choice,  64  ;  on  motives,  73  ;  on 
freedom,  390. 

Hamlet,  61,  62,  454. 

Happiness  and  pleasure,  113,  209. 

Health,  value  of,  250. 

Hebrew,  view  of  wisdom  and  good- 
ness, 9  ;  of  the  State,  327  ;  of 
morality,  335  ;  patriotism,  343  ; 
view  of  relation  of  righteousness 
and  prosperity,  415. 

Hedonism,  ethical,  22,  79 ;  psy- 
chological, 63  ;  paradox  of,  66, 
68;  pure, S3;  modified, 88;  mod- 
ern, 94  ;  its  view  of  self-sacri- 
fice, 104;  its  merits,  112;  its 
psychological  inadequacy,  114  ; 
its  failure  to  provide  distributive 


2  G 


466 


Index 


principles,  122  ;  its  account  of 
duty,  136 ;  its  reduction  of 
virtue  to  prudence,  1 39 ;  its 
estimate  of  character,  141  ;  its 
implicit  naturalism,  144  ;  esti- 
mate of,  146. 

Hegel,  ethics  of,  193,  219 ;  his 
view  of  rights,  299. 

Hegelian,  theory  of  freedom,  389  ; 
theology,  434. 

Hegesias,  89. 

Heine,  85. 

Heraclitus,  156,  170. 

Herder,  quoted,  439. 

Histrionic  natures,  265. 

Hobbes,  18,  96,  171,  271,  290. 

Hobbies,  252. 

Hodgson,  S.,  quoted,  368,  373. 

Hoffding,  40,  62,  64. 

Holy  Roman  Empire,  328,  346. 

Horace,  quoted,  86,  93. 

Humanism,  342. 

Humanity,  276  ;  enthusiasm  of, 
345  ;  religion  of,  402. 

Hume,  on  pleasure  and  choice,  64, 
67  ;  Hedonism  of,  96 ;  Deter- 
minism of,  374  ;  Sensationalism 
of,  379,  381. 

Humility,  264. 

Hutcheson,  171. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  on  the  ethical  and 
cosmic  processes,  95,  128,  405, 
407. 

Hypocrisy,  266. 

I,  and  me,  146. 

Ideal,  moral,   14  ;   '  psychological ' 

and  evolutionary  theory"  of,  29  ; 

problem  of,  79 ;  supremacy  of, 

260. 
Idealism,  moral,  and  realism,  32 ; 

of  rationalism,    152  ;   value  of, 

254  ;  dangers  of,  256  ;  absolute, 

and  immortality,  459. 
Ideals,  influence  of,  273. 
Ideo- motor  actions,  41. 
Imagination  and  will,  63. 
Immortality,    problem    of,    449  ; 

personal,  455. 

Imperative,  the  categorical,  216. 
Imperativeness  of  morality,  15. 
Indifference  of  Epicureans,  92. 


Individual,  the,  203 ;  the  dis- 
covery of,  323,  348. 

Individualism,  of  modern  ethics, 
17;  of  modern  life,  284;  and 
socialism,  271  ;  and  the  State, 
290  ;  Greek,  283,  326. 

Industrialism,  330,  339. 

Industry  and  the  State,  307. 

Inhibition,  46. 

Innocence,  214. 

Instinctive  actions,  41. 

Institutions,  moral,  215,  302. 

Intellectual,  elements  in  volition, 
59  ;  life,  254. 

Intellectualism,  Hedonistic,  140; 
ethical  inadequacy  of,  261  ;  of 
psychology,  385  ;  and  moralism, 
443  ;  of  science,  447. 

Intention  and  motive,  72. 

Intuitional  school,  20,  171,  179. 

Involuntary  activity,  40. 

Irrational,  39. 

Is,  and  ought,  15. 

Is- judgments,  25. 

James,  William,  on  ideo- motor 
action,  41 ;  on  volition,  40,  60, 
61 ;  on  pleasure  and  choice,  64, 
66  ;  on  freedom,  364,  365  ;  on 
religion,  429  note. 

Job,  the  problem  of,  148. 

Judgment,  moral,  14. 

Judgments  of  fact  and  of  worth, 
25. 

Justice,  240,  273,  296,  321. 

Kant,  on  man  as  an  end-in-him- 
self,  15,  21,  210;  on  duty,  21, 
1 39 ;  his  view  of  self-sacrifice, 
23  ;  his  view  of  ethics,  24,  38  ; 
his  ethical  rationalism,  163, 
165  ;  his  view  of  moral  rever- 
ence, 186  ;  on  moral  fanaticism, 
217  ;  on  inclination,  272 ;  on 
metaphysical  indifference,  356 ; 
his  statement  of  the  three  prob- 
lems of  metaphysics,  358  ;  on 
freedom,  360,  362,  365,  387; 
his  moral  theology,  414;  on 
immortality,  450. 

Kidd,  B.,  134  note,  331  note. 

Kilpatrick,  T.  B.,  179  note. 


Index  467 

Kingdom  of  God,  345.  Money,  251. 

Moral  method,  364. 

Laissezfaire,  285,  289,  307.  Moralitat,  215. 

Laurie,  S.  S.,  on  nature  and  char  Morality,  1. 

acter,    49,    50;    'attuent,'    51;  Motive  and  intention,  72. 

on  the  intellectualism  of  Hedon-  Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  quoted,  454. 

ism,    141;    'will-reason,'  201  ;  Mysticism,  165,  348,  396. 

on   the  State,    289  ;    on  know- 
ledge and  morality,  377  note.  Nationalisation  of  industry,  285. 
Law,  moral  and  natural,  1 5  ;  and  Natural,  and   normative  sciences, 

good,    19;    ethical   significance  25;  science  of  morals,  101,107. 

of,  212  ;  various  forms  of,  215;  Naturalism,  405. 

absoluteness     and    permanence  Nature,   and   character,   49 ;    and 

of,  216.  man,  409. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H. ,  341.  Necessitarianism,  361. 

Life,  worth  of,  10;  the  ideal,  254;  Neo-Platonism,  191. 

the  intellectual,  254.  Nihilism,  284. 

Locke,    on   morality,    1  :    on    the  Nominalism,  329. 

sovereign     power,     294,     295 ;  Normative  sciences,  24. 

school  of,  379. 

Logic  and  ethics,  26,  30,  37.  Obedience,  political,  294. 

Lotze,  on  freedom,  366,  370  ;    on  Objective  method  in  ethics,  35. 

infinite  personality,  445.  Objectivity  of  the  good,  120. 

Love,  of  our  neighbour,   175;    of  Obligation,    and    the    good,    21; 

God,    179    note;    of    mankind,  'psychological'   and   evolution- 

276.  ary  theory  of,  29. 

Office,  251,  264. 

MacCunn,  J.,  311.  Omar  Khayyam,  quoted,  86. 

Macdonald,  A.,  312.  Opportunity,  ethical,  416,  456. 

Maine,  H.  S.,  323.  Optimism,  94,  278. 

Martineau,  J.,  distinction  between  Organism,  social,  105. 

higher  and  lower  pleasures,  192;  Ought  and  Is,  15. 

on  freedom,  391  ;  on  the  ideal  Ought-judgments,  25. 

and  the  real,  424. 

Materialism,  373.  Paley,  96,  98. 

Memory  and  will,  62.  Pan-logism,  435. 

Meredith,  George,  233,  263.  Pantheism,  373. 

Metaphysics,  and  ethics,  353  ;  of  Parallelism,  386. 

ethics — its  three  problems,  358.  Pastoral  life,  338. 

Military  form  of  society,  338.  Pater,  W.,  quoted,  85,   157,   158, 

Mill,  J.   S.,  altruism   or   utilita-  261,  362. 

rianism    of,    22,    94,    129 ;    on  Patriotism,  310,  347. 

pleasure  and  choice,  64,  67,  69,  Paulsen,  quoted,  360. 

71;    on  motive  and    intention,  Personal  nature  of  the  good,  18. 

73  ;  on  quality  of  pleasures,  99,  Personality,  defined,  199  ;  of  God, 

122,    124  ;    on   character,    142 ;  427,  444. 

implicit    rationalism    of,    186;  Pessimism,  91,  364. 

determinism  of,  362,  374.  Philanthropy,   253  ;    and  culture, 

Milton,  quoted,  265.  262. 

Minor  moralities,  257.  Philosopher,  the,  256. 

Miser's  consciousness,  67.  Plato,  his  view  of  virtue,  39,  153, 

Monasticism,  162,  260,  329.  192,   220 ;   on  Ov^s,  40,   189  ; 


468 


Index 


on  conversion,  57,  233 ;  the 
'  Cave,'  60,  254,  256  ;  the  '  law- 
yer,' 60 ;  on  pleasures,  99  ;  on 
the  suffering  of  the  just,  14S  ; 
his  asceticism,  162 ;  on  justice, 
170,  224;  the  'Charioteer,' 
221  ;  on  the  intellectual  life, 
255,  261 ;  on  restheticism,  261  ; 
on  the  poets,  261 ;  on  the  State, 
282,  286,  287,  324. 

Pleasure,  and  the  good,  21  ;  and 
choice,  63  ;  its  relation  to  life, 
64  ;  idea  of,  distinguished  from 
pleasant  idea,  70 ;  higher  and 
lower,  121  ;  and  happiness, 
209. 

Pluralism,  364. 

Position,  251. 

Positivism,  402. 

Poverty,  274. 

Practice  and  theory,  5. 

Presentational  theory  of  will, 
378. 

Priest,  the,  256. 

Process,  ethical  and  cosmic,  128, 
406. 

Production,  304. 

Progress,  moral,  nature  of,  317; 
law  of,  323  ;  aspects  of,  332. 

Property,  298. 

Protagoras,  83. 

Protestantism,  329,  336. 

Proverbial  morality,  8. 

Prudence,  Cyrenaic  view  of,  88  ; 
Epicurean  view  of,  89 ;  Sidg- 
wick's  view  of,  109  ;  hedonistic 
view  of,  139  ;  Butler's  view 
of,  174,  177,  186  ;  and  virtue, 
251. 

Psychological,  method  in  ethics, 
28  ;  basis  of  ethics,  38  ;  theory 
of  the  self,  145 ;  determinism, 
384. 

Psychology,  as  natural  science, 
26  ;  and  ethics,  38. 

Public  interests,  285. 

Punishment,  292,  301,  312. 

Quality  of  pleasures,  99,  124. 

Rational,  and  irrational  nature 
and  life,  39;  Hedonism,  116. 


Rationalism,  ethical,  22,  79,  151, 

164. 
Realism,  ethical,  32  ;   hedonistic, 

144;    Greek,    152;    scholastic, 

328,  348. 

Reality,  moral,  432. 
Reason,   ethics   of,    38,    80,    151  ; 

and  will,  443. 
Rebellion,  294. 
Reflex  actions,  41. 
Reformation,  the,  336,  346. 
Regulative  principles,  109. 
Religion,  255,  262. 
Renouvier,  365. 
Repentance,  9. 
Responsibility,  264. 
Resolution,  294. 
Ricardou,  quoted,  423,  424,  426, 

442. 

Right  and  the  good,  14,  19. 
Rights,  real,  299. 
Ritchie,  D.  G.,  quoted,  296. 
Roman  Empire,  344. 
Rousseau,  view  of  society,  18. 
Royce,  J.,  26,  208  note,  446. 

Sage,  Stoic,  348. 

Saint,  mediaeval,  13,  260,  348. 

Sanctions  of  morality,  28,  97, 
137,  399. 

Satyrs,  230. 

Scepticism,  9,  85,  120. 

Schopenhauer,  443. 

Schurman,  J.  G.,  29  note. 

Science,  normative  and  natural, 
24  ;  man  of,  256. 

Scientific  ethics,  101. 

Scott,  quoted,  267. 

Scottish  philosophy,  179. 

Second  nature,  52. 

Security,  274,  299. 

Self,  and  freedom,  374 ;  tran- 
scendental, 381. 

Self-control,  154. 

Self-culture,  280. 

Self-development,  240,  247. 

Self-discipline,  240. 

Self-interest,  22. 

Self-knowledge,  245,  247. 

Self-limitation,  246. 

Self-love,  22,  174,  176. 

Self-realisation,  81,  197. 


Index 


469 


Self-reverence,  265. 

Self-sacrifice,  22,  28,  167,  206 
242,  279. 

Selfishness,  175. 

Semi-reflex  actions,  41. 

Sensationalism  and  Hedonism, 
116. 

Sense,  moral,  20. 

Sensibility,  ethics  of,  40,  80,  146  ; 
and  sensation,  44. 

Sensori-motor  actions,  41. 

Service,  264. 

Shaftesbury,  171. 

Shakespeare,  quoted,  230. 

Sharp,  F.  C.,  35. 

Sidgwick,  H.,  on  pleasure  and 
choice,  64,  71  ;  rational  Hedon- 
ism of,  108,  128,  194;  on  al- 
truism, 110,  1 34  ;  on  benevo- 
lence, 110;  on  justice,  112;  on 
the  good,  116  ;  on  '  ideal  goods,' 
ib.  ;  on  culture,  118;  on  ethi- 
cal and  psychological  Hedonism, 
136;  on  Intuitionism,  183; 
his  theological  hypothesis, 
414. 

Simcox,  G.  A.,  56. 

Sittlichkeit,  215. 

Slavery,  299. 

Social,  nature  of  the  good,  18 ; 
organism,  105,  133  ;  tissue,  105; 
type,  ib. ;  health,  ib. ;  life,  269  ; 
virtue,  272. 

Socialism,  271,  284,  286,  301, 
309,  337. 

Society  and  the  State,  281. 

Socrates,  his  conception  of^  virtue, 
9,  83,  170,  188;  divinity  of, 
14  ;  method  of,  35,  37 ;  Hedon- 
ism of,  83 ;  Rationalism  of, 
153  ;  his  moderation,  153  ;  and 
the  State,  294. 

Solitude,  267,  273. 
Sophists,  the,  379. 
Sorley,  W.  R.,  133. 
Sovereignty,  293,  296. 
Spartan  State,  the,  339. 
Specialisation,  251,  263. 
Spencer,  on  conduct,  4  ;    on   the 
evolution  of  morality,  101  ;  on 
altruism  and  egoism,  104,  130  ; 
on  sanctions  of  morality,  128  ; 


on  duty,  138  ;  Agnosticism  of, 
400  ;  on  the  cosmic  and  ethical 
processes,  408. 

Sphere,  ethical,  416. 

Spinoza,  366,  373,  394. 

Spontaneous  actions,  41. 

State,  the  Greek,  17,  282,  287; 
and  society,  281,  301  ;  ethical 
value  of,  287  ;  ethical  basis  of, 
289 ;  limit  of  its  action,  294  ; 
ethical  functions  of,  296 ;  and 
church,  302  ;  and  family,  ib. ; 
permanence  of,  310;  and  pun- 
ishment, 315  ;  and  the  individ- 
ual, 324 ;  interference,  289, 
297. 

Stephen,  L.,  on  virtue  and  happi- 
ness, 95,  133 ;  on  evolutional 
utilitarianism,  105 ;  on  sym- 
pathy, 106  ;  on  metaphysics, 
353. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  55,  230. 

Stirling,  J.  H.,  219. 

Stoics,  ethics  of,  156,  189,  191  ; 
cosmopolitanism  of,  311,  344; 
view  of  the  State,  326  ;  view  of 
virtue,  334  ;  on  the  sphere  of 
virtue,  418. 

Stout,  G.  F.,  384. 

Subjectivity,  ethical  and  intellec- 
tual compared,  120. 

Suicide,  250. 

Summum  bonum,  79. 

Sympathy,  Spencer  on,  104  ;  Mill's 
and  Spencer's  view  criticised, 
130;  ethical  value  of,  278. 

Taylor,  F.  M.,  291. 

Temperance,  Greek,  153,  199,  230; 
virtue  of,  240,  241,  322. 

Temptation,  230. 

Tennyson,  quoted,  231,  258. 

Theodoras,  89. 

Theology,  moral,  399. 

Theory  and  practice,  5. 

Transcendentalism  and  Natural- 
ism, 32 ;  and  freedom,  374, 
387. 

Trench,  quoted,  267. 

Truth  and  the  good,  10. 

Types,  moral,  13 ;  of  ethical 
theory,  38. 


470 


Index 


Unity,  Mill's  feeling  of,  130;  of 
moral  life,  239. 

Upton,  C.  B.,  quoted,  391. 

Useful  and  the  pleasant,  106. 

Utilitarianism,  22,  96  ;  evolution- 
ary, 101  ;  Rational,  108. 

Vicariousness,  moral,  272. 

Virtue,  and  the  good,  20 ;  intel- 
lectual and  moral,  21 ;  Christian 
view  of,  21  ;  and  knowledge, 
59 ;  and  happiness,  95 ;  and 
prudence,  139. 

Virtues,  cardinal,  20  ;  and  duties, 
239  ;  sterner  and  gentler,  337. 

Vocation,  251. 


Volition,  nature  of,  42 ;  process 
of,  45  ;  limitations  of,  53 ;  and 
feeling,  63. 

Wagner,  229. 

Ward,  J.,  42  note,  378,  382. 

Well-being,  274. 

Will,   as  ethical  standpoint,   40 ; 

the    general,    293  ;     of     God, 

399. 
Williams,    C.     M.,    quoted,    457, 

458. 

Wordsworth,  quoted,  258. 
Work,  252. 

Worth,  judgments  of,  25. 
Wuudt,  385. 


TUE     KND. 


PRINTED   BY    WILLIAM    BLACKWOOD   AND  BOMB. 


